Psychiatry and the ‘Gay Holocaust’ – the lessons of Jill Soloway’s Transparent

Abstract

Aims: To consider issues relevant to psychiatry raised by the television series, 'Transparent'. Conclusions: Psychiatry's disturbing history regarding the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community shares many aspects with the group's persecution by the National Socialist regime in Germany. The medicalised 'otherness' conferred on LGBTI patients, latent homophobia and transphobia, and lack of culturally sensitive clinical services for these people represent a major ethical challenge for modern Australasian psychiatry.

Psychiatry’s ethical involvement in gender-affirming care

“…These uncertainties need to be taken into account by mental health professionals charged with authorising gender-reassignment. Psychiatry has a disturbing history with regard to the human rights of the LBGTI community, [1][2][3][4] and also a history of enthusiastically embracing physical treatments and surgical procedures that were later shown to be problematic or harmful. 18 The case of Josh illustrates that gender-reassignment has the potential to do harm and raises questions about how we best discharge our ethical responsibility in the treatment of transgender people.…”

“…sychiatry has a long history of collusion with social systems that have pathologised, persecuted or even killed lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) individuals. [1][2][3][4] Times have changed, and our profession now acknowledges and strives to address the marginalisation and psychological adversity that LGBTI individuals face. Recently, attention has focussed especially on the transgender (trans) community.…”

More than a House of Cards: Developing a Firm Foundation for Streaming Media and Consumer-Licensed Content in the Library

“…A critical darling, the story of a transgender woman "coming out late in life and trying to share her authentic self with her dysfunctional family" (Molloy, 2014) struck a chord with audiences and quickly made its way into scholarly discussions and course syllabi. (Parsons, 2015;Robertson, 2016). …”