The <i>SPSSI</i> Task Force on Sexual Orientation, the Nature of Sex, and the Contours of Activist Science

Pettit, Michael

doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.2010.01685.x

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…According to Terry, the nature of sexual orientation was presumed a priori, and a massive scientific infrastructure was built up around it to confirm what scientists already believed: sexual orientation must reside in the body (or, more specifically, the mind, the brain, or the genetic code) (see also Stein 1999). For example, in response to conservative attacks on the rights of sexual minorities in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Problems' Task Force on Sexual Orientation ultimately incorporated sociobiology as a conceptual framework for explaining the nature of sexual orientation and the rights of sexual minorities; according to Pettit (2011), the task force was Breluctant to define homosexuality purely in terms of the social; the biological was seen as crucial in the forging of an identity and securing political rights^(p. 102). Essentialist, positivist approaches to taxonomizing sexualities did not exclude concern about other dimensions of social difference, however.…”

Section: Psychotherapy In/and Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Problem with the Phrase “Intersecting Identities”: LGBT Affirmative Therapy, Intersectionality, and Neoliberalism

Grzanka

Miles

2016

Sex Res Soc Policy

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Since the declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973, psychology has transformed the way it approaches sexual orientation and gender identity issues in scientific research and clinical practice. The paradigmatic shift from psychopathology to identity has corresponded with the introduction of BLGBT affirmative therapy,^which suggests that therapists should affirm clients' sexual orientations rather than reinforce sexual minorities' experiences of stigma and marginalization. This qualitative study used a subset of psychotherapy training videos about LGBT issues to explore the form of content of LGBT affirmative therapy in the context of increased attention to identity and multiculturalism in applied psychology. The videos suggest that multiculturally competent therapists should understand sexuality and gender issues in terms of what psychologists call Bmultiple^or Bintersecting^identities, namely race and ethnicity. While the multicultural turn in psychotherapy may signal a transformation in mental health service provision, our analysis questions whether these videos may unintentionally reflect a neoliberal logic of inclusion that obscures the structural dimensions of social inequality. We suggest that the uptake of intersectionality-like identitarian discourse in psychotherapy in particular offers opportunities for challenging and reinforcing neoliberalism.

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Section: Psychotherapy In/and Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Problem with the Phrase “Intersecting Identities”: LGBT Affirmative Therapy, Intersectionality, and Neoliberalism

Grzanka

Miles

2016

Sex Res Soc Policy

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“…It helped transform lesbians from a hidden marginalised group into a “proud and vocal part of both the gay and women’s liberation movements” ( Soares, 1998 , p. 47) and “arguably reconﬁgured the relationship between lesbians and medico-scientiﬁc discourse” ( Jennings, 2008 , p. 901). For example, rather than completely rejecting psy science, some activists utilised some psy-centred discourse and practice to challenge pathologisation as a form of “activist” or “emancipatory” science (Hubbard, 2017; Pettit, 2011 ). Indeed, some recent scholarship has reclaimed this work as early examples of LGBTQIA+ “affirmative psychology” (Hubbard, 2020; Hubbard & Griffiths, 2019 ).…”

Section: Complicating Histories Of Activism and The Psy-professionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A history of lesbian politics and the psy professions

Spandler

Carr

2020

Feminism & Psychology

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This article explores the relationship between lesbian activists and the “psy professions” (especially psychology and psychiatry) in England from the 1960s to the 1980s. We draw on UK-based LGBTQIA+ archive sources and specifically magazines produced by, and for, lesbians. We use this material to identify three key strategies used within the lesbian movement to contest psycho-pathologisation during this 30-year period: from respectable collaborationist forms of activism during the 1960s; to more liberationist oppositional politics during the early 1970s; to radical feminist separatist activism in the 1980s. Whilst these strategies broadly map onto activist strategies deployed within the wider lesbian and gay movement during this time, this article explores how these politics manifested in particular ways, specifically in relation to the psy disciplines in the UK. We describe these strategies, illustrating them with examples of activism from the archives. We then use this history to problematise a linear, overly reductionist or binary history of liberation from psycho-pathologisation. Finally, we explore some complexities in the relationship between sexuality, activism and the psy professions.

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“…In contrast, ‘born that way’ arguments have become the good liberal position when it comes to sexual behavior. This parting of ways, in terms of how policy-minded psychologists conceptualize race and sexuality, began in the 1970s (Pettit, 2011). However, influenced by queer theory, Hegarty is much less sanguine than Longino about psychology’s naturalization of sexuality.…”

Section: The Challenge Of Recent Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Subject matter: Human behavior, psychological expertise, and therapeutic lives

Pettit

2014

Soc Stud Sci

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Pettit 147 communication (Gitlin, 1978). On this basis, critical psychologist-historians select their favored disorder or construct, offer a largely intellectual history of it, and then assert that everyday experience has been psychologized. Such an approach speaks more to scientists' visions and pretensions than to the social life of psychological facts (O'Connor and Joffe, 2013). Moreover, this approach bolsters and inflates, rather than critically scrutinizes, the scientist's authority. We need greater specificity about psychology's impact, better evidence of the circuits between expert description and self-understanding, and appreciation of the complicated lives of scientific methods and theories.The books under review explore entanglements of psychology, sex, childhood, and development, and in so doing offer rich resources for rethinking much of the received wisdom about the public understanding of psychology, the authority of its experts, and the process of subjectification. The sex/gender distinction has long been recognized as a crucial site of traffic between nature and culture, one weighty with politics and consequences. These dynamics are amplified around children and development, where behavioral sciences and social policy meet, and each tries to anticipate and realize a better future (Adams et al., 2009). As the books here illustrate, psychology does not seek simply to craft accurate depictions of human behavior, but rather to sustain therapeutic regimes directed at intervention and improvement. In other words, the books foreground those sites where psychology's ambitions to 'make up people' (Hacking, 2002) become most explicit.At first glance, Peter Hegarty's (2013) book seems like a narrow micro-study. After all, it focuses on a brief dispute between two scientists. In 1948, Lewis Terman wrote a scathing and detailed critique of the methodology and findings of Alfred Kinsey's fielddefining survey of American sexual behavior. However, the book is less a history of these figures than it is a series of essays that draw freely from social theory, cognitive science, and archival research to explore the co-production of sexuality and intelligence as two of the most salient categories of human difference. Hegarty complicates received wisdom that sees Kinsey as the liberator of American sexual attitudes and Terman as the eugenicist intelligence tester. At the same time, Hegarty destabilizes longstanding assumptions within the field of sexology where the scientist's heterosexuality is often equated with greater impartiality and objectivity. He shows that both men were deeply invested in their subjects' sexual proclivities and cognitive abilities, and he uses their dispute to open a broad history of sexuality that examines the link between masturbation and precociousness, the historical stability of patterns of sexual behavior, sex as a predictor of class, and the role of religion in repressing sexual urges. At the heart of the book is the figure of the queer genius. Unsurprisingly, Michel Foucault's theoriz...

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The SPSSI Task Force on Sexual Orientation, the Nature of Sex, and the Contours of Activist Science

Cited by 12 publications

References 31 publications

The Problem with the Phrase “Intersecting Identities”: LGBT Affirmative Therapy, Intersectionality, and Neoliberalism

The Problem with the Phrase “Intersecting Identities”: LGBT Affirmative Therapy, Intersectionality, and Neoliberalism

A history of lesbian politics and the psy professions

Subject matter: Human behavior, psychological expertise, and therapeutic lives

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