Article on Homosexuality

[The Spartan]

Can someone provide a link to an article on homosexuality? Specifically what I'm looking for is one that supports the fact that it's not a pathology(?). Is that the right word? Basically something that backs up why it's not listed as a mental disease.

[HMS Conqueror]

That's largely a value judgment. It used to be considered a mental illness in the early US psychologists' manuals. Today it isn't. Some people think psychologists' opinions carry very great weight - YMMV.

[Batman]

The term you're looking for is pathological (pathology being the study of diseases while pathological means resulting from diseases, which I think was what you were going for).

[The Spartan]

That's largely a value judgment. It used to be considered a mental illness in the early US psychologists' manuals. Today it isn't. Some people think psychologists' opinions carry very great weight - YMMV.

That's what I mean, though. There was something that convinced them to remove it from DSM IV: What was it?

The term you're looking for is pathological (pathology being the study of diseases while pathological means resulting from diseases, which I think was what you were going for).

Ah, thank you. I knew it was along those lines.

[HMS Conqueror]

That's largely a value judgment. It used to be considered a mental illness in the early US psychologists' manuals. Today it isn't. Some people think psychologists' opinions carry very great weight - YMMV.

That's what I mean, though. There was something that convinced them to remove it from DSM IV: What was it?

Changing intellectual fads. In 1940 being gay was beyond the pale. In 1970, being anti-gay was beyond the pale, at least for educated people.

If I were gay, I would be pretty worried about the influence psychologists enjoy and where the dice might land in another 30 years.

[PainRack]

Well, there's always the case of David Reimer. Entirely unethical experiment but it does show that gender and sexual orientation isn't just a matter of choice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

To sum things up, Pyschologist does everything possible to make a guy think he's a girl, it doesn't work, screws up the boy royally and he committed suicide in 2004.

[HMS Conqueror]

Well, there's always the case of David Reimer. Entirely unethical experiment but it does show that gender and sexual orientation isn't just a matter of choice.

Not strictly relevant. It's not a choice to get gangrene, but it's still a pathology.

[Alyrium Denryle]

That's largely a value judgment. It used to be considered a mental illness in the early US psychologists' manuals. Today it isn't. Some people think psychologists' opinions carry very great weight - YMMV.

That's what I mean, though. There was something that convinced them to remove it from DSM IV: What was it?

Changing intellectual fads. In 1940 being gay was beyond the pale. In 1970, being anti-gay was beyond the pale, at least for educated people.

If I were gay, I would be pretty worried about the influence psychologists enjoy and where the dice might land in another 30 years.

No, that is actually not why. If you actually knew the history of science, and how the decision was made...

Here is the real version for those who care.

The studies on homosexuality (and for that matter, every aspect of human sexuality other than gross anatomy) leading up into the seventies were poorly designed. They correlated homosexuality with depression, suicide, self-destructive behavior etc. However, they did not account for third variables--like the fact that homosexuals were more likely to be abused, kicked out of their homes, denied employment etc. In the 60s and 70s, a group of psychiatrists actually did the work and concluded that simply being gay did not cause these problems. Other people's reactions to gay people did. As a result, they removed homosexuality from the list of mental disorders. A disorder being defined as a condition which is both abnormal, and which in itself causes harm to either the person with the condition, or induces them to harm others.

[HMS Conqueror]

No, that is actually not why. If you actually knew the history of science,

Rather presumptuous to call psychology part of science.

and how the decision was made...

Politics. Plenty of dumb and evil decisions are made this way. Most of them, in fact.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Rather presumptuous to call psychology part of science.

Have you ever read a peer reviewed paper in the field since the 50s? If no, shut the fuck up. Being a scientist, I am pretty sure I know what does and does not constitute science. Theories in psychology (now, as opposed to say, in the 1940s and earlier when the original pathological classification of homosexuality was made) make testable predictions about what we should see in behavior, neuro-anatomy/functional MRI, and for that matter genetics, which are either provisionally accepted or falsified. The methodology in observational and experimental psychology are also far more rigorous than in any of the other soft sciences, and they have had to develop their own tools both physical and mathematical to address their research questions. Go fuck yourself.

Politics. Plenty of dumb and evil decisions are made this way. Most of them, in fact.

Any evidence to back this up, or are you just shitting from the wrong orifice again? Oh, I know. You accept blindly what someone else told you on the subject, rather than actually reading studies regarding the causes of homosexuality and the causes of associated incidence of psychological morbidity like I do. Would you like some of the references, or are you just going to dismiss an entire social science because you do not agree with its conclusions?

[HMS Conqueror]

Rather presumptuous to call psychology part of science.

Have you ever read a peer reviewed paper in the field since the 50s? If no, shut the fuck up. Being a scientist, I am pretty sure I know what does and does not constitute science. Theories in psychology (now, as opposed to say, in the 1940s and earlier when the original pathological classification of homosexuality was made) make testable predictions about what we should see in behavior, neuro-anatomy/functional MRI, and for that matter genetics, which are either provisionally accepted or falsified. The methodology in observational and experimental psychology are also far more rigorous than in any of the other soft sciences, and they have had to develop their own tools both physical and mathematical to address their research questions. Go fuck yourself.

I don't doubt you can collect statistics about what people do, and if that is all psychology did, it would be a science. It would also be a lot more limited than it currently is. The problems begin when people start trying to draw conclusions from these statistics, and psychology has a simply horrible track-record here. Not usually because of the weakness of the evidence, which any real scientist would simply take as a cue to draw modest conclusions. But because people instead make wild leaps of logic or use it to support their own political and philosophical views and prejudices. The homosexuality thing is a case in point, but there are many others.

Politics. Plenty of dumb and evil decisions are made this way. Most of them, in fact.

Any evidence to back this up, or are you just shitting from the wrong orifice again? Oh, I know. You accept blindly what someone else told you on the subject, rather than actually reading studies regarding the causes of homosexuality and the causes of associated incidence of psychological morbidity like I do. Would you like some of the references, or are you just going to dismiss an entire social science because you do not agree with its conclusions?

The DSM is written by the head committee of an academic trade association. There's enough politics just in who gets appointed to the committee, and would be even if it was a totally obscure, abstract area of science only two dozen people cared about. But its conclusions have an impact on, for instance, criminal and civil legal proceedings. It is possible to imprison someone for life without charge or trial on the basis of a diagnosis made from this manual. Do you think there's any chance in hell that it's not political? The homosexuality thing is again a case in point - it was added because old Christian American society thought homosexuality was Very Bad, and removed because the political winds changed and it started making them look like backward homophobes.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I don't doubt you can collect statistics about what people do, and if that is all psychology did, it would be a science. It would also be a lot more limited than it currently is. The problems begin when people start trying to draw conclusions from these statistics, and psychology has a simply horrible track-record here. Not usually because of the weakness of the evidence, which any real scientist would simply take as a cue to draw modest conclusions. But because people instead make wild leaps of logic or use it to support their own political and philosophical views and prejudices. The homosexuality thing is a case in point, but there are many others.

Do you have specific references as to which conclusions are wild and insane, as well as why? Making broad sweeping statements will get you nowhere here without a specific case for me to examine, and the homosexuality one is just your assertion that the conclusions were drawn from politics. You have no data to back it up, and the data from the last 40 years has validated the conclusion of the reclassification. There is more than enough data to make the conclusion that "homosexuality is not a pathological condition"

The homosexuality thing is again a case in point - it was added because old Christian American society thought homosexuality was Very Bad, and removed because the political winds changed and it started making them look like backward homophobes.

Belied by the fact that the political winds had not in fact changed by the 1970s. The only difference was that activists were not thrown in prison as often as they were in the 1950s and 1960s, when walking while gay was grounds to be arrested, with your name and address published in the paper, opening you up to job loss and hate crimes. It was not until the 80s that being gay was not a near-automatic trip to being shunned, and being gay was still illegal in most states. Also: Just because politics may have been involved in the appointment of people to the Board of Trustees, does not mean they were selected on the basis of their stance on homosexuality. That is something you need to support with hard evidence. Not your say so. You rail against the field making wild leaps, and then you make that particular claim? Really?

"...this change reflected the point of view that homosexuality was to be considered a mental disorder only if it was subjectively disturbing to the individual. The decision of the APA Board...took place in the context of new sociological data, biological inferences, and de-emphasis of psychoanalytic observations."~Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, 4th ed

Prior to the declassification, homosexuality was classified as pathology on the basis of that which you deride. Psychiatrists were using a bad set of theories (psychoanalysis), and relied not on hard statistics, but on individual case studies of people in therapy. You can see why this would be bad, right? The psychiatrists would never see psychologically normal gay people. The statistics they did have were simple correlations linking homosexuals to increases suicide risk, depression, and other established disorders. What those simple correlations could not do was establish CAUSALITY. For homosexuality to be a disorder, it had to cause in itself, the problems observed. They got better data, and it was found that the actual cause was the abuse suffered by gay people at the hands of straight people, combined with the normal probability of having another condition (being gay, and just so happening to go see a psychiatrist). If you would like, I can show you the statistics for things like hate-crimes, corrective rape (straight men trying to rape the gay out of lesbians), being kicked out of their homes, and general persecution for gay people. They are rather horrifying, and these traumas are better (statistically) at explaining the differences seen between gay and straight people in the relative rates of psychiatric disorders.

The reclassification has been supported by 40 years of hard data. Get off it.

There's enough politics just in who gets appointed to the committee, and would be even if it was a totally obscure, abstract area of science only two dozen people cared about. But its conclusions have an impact on, for instance, criminal and civil legal proceedings. It is possible to imprison someone for life without charge or trial on the basis of a diagnosis made from this manual.

Not only is this a red-herring, it is also a bald-faced lie. People cannot be forcibly committed unless they are deemed a danger to themselves or others, and doing this requires a court proceeding which is subject to appeals and Habeus Corpus does apply.

[Spoonist]

@HMS Conqueror
This is just stupid, of course modern phsychology is science. See the

So in your grandeur theory of the universe where do you draw the line between science and psychology?
Is neuroscience science?
Is neuroimaging science?
Is Cognitive neuroscience science?
Is pattern recognition and response science?
Is Cognitive psychology science?
Is modern psychology science?
For anyone with any little bit of knowledge in the field the answer to all of those are YES. Only a layman would make any distinction.

Lets go at it from some different angles, inspired by just having the honorary nobel price in economics announced...
Is game theory science?
Is Behavioral economics science?
Is Financial economics science?
They rely on the same basis.

This is just another argument from ignorance from you.

[Alyrium Denryle]

No. An argument from ignorance is something else. His is an argument from arrogance and pretentiousness.

[HMS Conqueror]

I don't doubt you can collect statistics about what people do, and if that is all psychology did, it would be a science. It would also be a lot more limited than it currently is. The problems begin when people start trying to draw conclusions from these statistics, and psychology has a simply horrible track-record here. Not usually because of the weakness of the evidence, which any real scientist would simply take as a cue to draw modest conclusions. But because people instead make wild leaps of logic or use it to support their own political and philosophical views and prejudices. The homosexuality thing is a case in point, but there are many others.

Do you have specific references as to which conclusions are wild and insane, as well as why?

- Classifying homosexuality as a disease (including horrifying attempts at "treatment")
- Classifying political dissent as a disease
- A vast array of drug and other treatments administered, often without consent, on the basis of little or no evidence of efficacy (ECT, too many drug treatments to name)
- All sorts of nonsense "fields" backed up by nothing, such as "primal scream therapy"
- The entire field of psychoanalysis

A more pertinent question is: has psychology contributed anything that isn't highly questionable that is also non-trivial and not stolen from some other field?

Making broad sweeping statements will get you nowhere here without a specific case for me to examine, and the homosexuality one is just your assertion that the conclusions were drawn from politics. You have no data to back it up, and the data from the last 40 years has validated the conclusion of the reclassification. There is more than enough data to make the conclusion that "homosexuality is not a pathological condition"

Of course there's enough data to 'prove' something that's self-evidently true. The scandal is that it was classified as a disease in the first place. The people who did so were either evil or incompetent - take your pick.

The homosexuality thing is again a case in point - it was added because old Christian American society thought homosexuality was Very Bad, and removed because the political winds changed and it started making them look like backward homophobes.

Belied by the fact that the political winds had not in fact changed by the 1970s.

No not really. The decision - that passed with less than 60% approval - occurred in line with the first wave of legalisations.

"...this change reflected the point of view that homosexuality was to be considered a mental disorder only if it was subjectively disturbing to the individual. The decision of the APA Board...took place in the context of new sociological data, biological inferences, and de-emphasis of psychoanalytic observations."~Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, 4th ed

Amazingly, psychiatrists don't write their own history with themselves as villains.

There's enough politics just in who gets appointed to the committee, and would be even if it was a totally obscure, abstract area of science only two dozen people cared about. But its conclusions have an impact on, for instance, criminal and civil legal proceedings. It is possible to imprison someone for life without charge or trial on the basis of a diagnosis made from this manual.

Not only is this a red-herring, it is also a bald-faced lie. People cannot be forcibly committed unless they are deemed a danger to themselves or others, and doing this requires a court proceeding which is subject to appeals and Habeus Corpus does apply.

All habeas corpus means is that you can apply to be released if there's no legal reason for you to be held. The point is that it is legal to indefinitely detain people without trial or accusation of wrong-doing on the basis of a court order obtained from a judge by a psychiatrist, on the mere supposition that you might commit a crime.

[Alyrium Denryle]

- Classifying homosexuality as a disease (including horrifying attempts at "treatment")

Done well before psychology was a science. Yes. It has not ALWAYS been one (in fact, there was a time when none of the physical sciences were actually sciences). It is NOW, and had become one by the late sixties. However, it was not when the original classification was made.

- Classifying political dissent as a disease

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

By that logic, geology and biology are not sciences because the Soviet Union foisted some very strange practices on said scientists. No.

Listen to yourself for a second. You are claiming something is not a science, because in the soviet union, which did not permit academic, press,political, and medical independence/freedom at all, used that field to commit people for political dissent?

- A vast array of drug and other treatments administered, often without consent, on the basis of little or no evidence of efficacy (ECT, too many drug treatments to name)

Are you narrowing down the time frame here? Or are you just going to lump the 1800s in the 2000s? How much experience with the mentally ill in the modern period do you have? Have you ever seen the about-face a schizophrenia patient will make when medicated? How about severe bi-polar disorder? I have seen both. Medications do in fact work, and they are subjected to fairly rigorous testing before they are used on people. That is a far cry from the snake oil salesmen of the 1800s, but then again, the entire of field of medicine was like this. Unless you are going to claim that the entirety of the medical sciences are quackery because doctors used leeches in the medieval period.

- All sorts of nonsense "fields" backed up by nothing, such as "primal scream therapy"

Which has not been accepted by mainstream psychologists. Every field of science has crackpots. Unless you are going to claim that biology is not science because lysenkoism existed, or that physics is not a science because Einstein rejected QM, you have nothing.

Also, it is a theraputic technique. Not an academic theory. Those two are completely different things.

- The entire field of psychoanalysis

Which has long since been rejected as NOT BEING SCIENCE. Again, that is like claiming physics is not science because at some point in its history, people thought that light passed through The Ether.

Of course there's enough data to 'prove' something that's self-evidently true. The scandal is that it was classified as a disease in the first place. The people who did so were either evil or incompetent - take your pick.

First, you are moving your goal-posts. You have been arguing in this entire thread that the reclassification to non-pathology was motivated by politics and was an error.

Second, you have used a false dichotomy. There are more options than that. Insufficient data, incorrect data, bad underlying premises. Simply prejudiced as opposed to evil.

No not really. The decision - that passed with less than 60% approval - occurred in line with the first wave of legalisations.

Which basically made it not a crime anymore to walk while gay, and only in some areas.

All habeas corpus means is that you can apply to be released if there's no legal reason for you to be held. The point is that it is legal to indefinitely detain people without trial or accusation of wrong-doing on the basis of a court order obtained from a judge by a psychiatrist, on the mere supposition that you might commit a crime.

Moving your goalposts again. A civil commitment proceeding is due process, and thus a trial. Your claim is flatly contradicted by US Federal and State law. I am sure you can find a Junta somewhere where this is not true, but guess what? That is not a problem of the science itself.

As a counter-point, what exactly do you do with someone who has command hallucinations of demons telling her to kill herself and others and who writes messages on the walls of her apartment in her own blood (Yes, a good friend of mine suffers from this)? What would you do if she did not respond to medications, as some such patients dont, or if the medications lost their effectiveness because her neuro-chemistry adapted to their presence? Just let her...stew?