Famous lgbtq psychologists
(adapted from the American Psychologist, 1992, 47, 499-501).
Biography
APA Award:
Text of Citation
Reflections
Eulogies:
APA
LA Times
NY Times
NGLTF
1997 APA Convention
Bibliography
Evelyn Hooker was born September 2, 1907, the sixth child of nine in her grandmother's house, next door to Buffalo Bill's home in North Platte, Nebraska. Had she been born a few months earlier, it would have been in a sod house in the Sand Hills where her parents lived out a poverty-ridden existence, the lot of farmers in that area. Until she was 12, there was a succession of farms, some rented, and a section of land unbroken by plow in northeastern Colorado. Also, there was a succession of one-room schoolhouses, the only root of books.
Through all these early years, there was a continual theme provided by her mother (a true pioneer who had been brought to Nebraska in a covered wagon): "Get an education and they ca
Five years ago, the Supreme Court allowed same-sex marriage to become the commandment of the land when it struck down the Defense of Marriage Behave, which defined marriage as between one man and one woman. It was a victory built on generations of tireless activism, election day disappointments and spurts of progress across the country.
One of the key elements to winning this battle was study, notably that of UCLA psychologist Evelyn Hooker. In the 1940s and 50s, when gay men could be arrested just for being gay, Hooker bucked the norms of her era and studied them like any other subject. Her groundbreaking work showed that being gay was not a mental illness.
It started with a friendship. After having lost her tenure-track job at Whittier College due to suspicions that she held subversive political views, Hooker was hired on at UCLA, where she became friends with Sam From, a gay student in one of her psychology classes.
As they became friends, he introduced her to the people in his animation, a wide circle of gay artists, engineers, philosophers and other productive, seemingly well-adjusted people. This was significant because at the time, homosexuality was viewed as “a pervasive passionate
Dr. Charles Silverstein, pioneering gay therapist and activist, dies at 87
Dr. Charles Silverstein, who as just a graduate scholar at Rutgers played a key role in removing homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Index of Mental Disorders in 1973 and went on to make pioneering contributions as a therapist to the mental health of LGBTQ people, died January 30 at his Manhattan abode at the age of 87. The cause was lung cancer, his executor Aron Berlinger said.
Born April 23, 1935 in Brooklyn, Fresh York, Silverstein was the son of a truck driver and a homemaker. He went on to become a member of the Gay Activists Alliance in 1972 when it was one of the groups pressing the APA to revise its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual to cease classifying homosexuality as an illness.
“The psychiatric profession was considered to be a ‘gatekeeper’ of social attitudes,” he wrote, “and we were convinced that if we could eliminate the stigma of homosexuality in medicine, that sodomy laws would eventually collapse, and that male lover people could craft a significant advance toward gaining our civil rights.”
The campaign, which involved such leading gay and lesbian activists of the day as
The pioneering psychologist who proved that being gay isn’t a mental illness
‘What is called this year “evil” and whatever, next year may constitute the blessing of the human race.’
Throughout much of the 20th century in the Merged States, homosexuality was considered a mental illness by the medical establishment. This view created a mean set of circumstances for gay people, as a lack of serious investigate into homosexuality allowed social institutions to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, and medical institutions could subject gay people to psychologically and physically damaging therapies.
This brief video essay explores the legacy of the late US psychologist Evelyn Hooker (1907-96), whose groundbreaking studies of homosexuality would help lay the groundwork for the modern gay rights movement. Inspired by her friendship with a gay learner she met while instruction at the University of California, Los Angeles in the 1940s, Hooker began to study mental stability in straight and lgbtq+ male populations. Ultimately, her work revealed that there was no correlation between homosexuality and psychological maladjustment. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association finally
LGBTQ+ Women Who Made History
In May 2019, the city of Modern York announced plans to honor Queer activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera with a statue. The municipality of New York claimed the monument will be the "first permanent, universal artwork recognizing gender nonconforming women in the world." Johnson and Rivera were prominent figures in uprisings against 1969 police raids at the gay bar Stonewall Inn. Their protests increased visibility for the cause of LGBTQ+ acceptance.
In celebration of Pride Month, we honor Queer women who contain made remarkable contributions to the nation and helped advance equality in fields as diverse as medicine and the dramatic arts. Here are a several of their stories, represented by objects in the Smithsonian's collections.
1. Josephine Baker
Entertainer and activist Josephine Baker performed in vaudeville showcases and in Broadway musicals, including Shuffle Along. In 1925, she moved to Paris to perform in a revue. When the show closed, Baker was given her own present and found stardom. She became the first African American woman to celebrity in a motion picture and to perform with an integrated cast at an Americ