The Sexual Diversity Debate in Brazilian Psychology: Professional Regulation at Stake

Abstract

So-called “sexual reorientation therapies” represent a challenge to the scientific and professional development of Psychology, and to the exercise and free expression of sexual orientation as a human right. Since 1999 the Brazilian Federal Council of Psychology (CFP) has implemented a ban against the pathologization of homosexuality. The validity of that normative instrument, known as Resolution 01/99, has been contested by moral entrepreneurs within the profession, self-identified as Evangelical Christians, who pose a broader challenge to Psychology, standing as a secular, science-based profession. The controversy created by the challenge to CFP’s positions on homosexuality and on religion extrapolates the domain of Psychology and its regulation as a science and profession, and becomes one more dispute related to sexual politics in Brazil. In this paper we explore the process by which sexual diversity has become a contentious issue for Brazilian Psychology, affecting the politics and regulation of the profession.

Beliefs Toward Cure of Homosexuality Scale: Evidence for Factor Structure

“…This position was present (notably) in the first editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychological Association (APA) (Aragusuku & Lara, 2019). Thus, models were developed in order to "treat" and "cure" sexual orientations that escaped the heteronormative pattern, and which were therefore associated with perversions, sexual deviations and pathologies (Macedo & Sívori, 2019).…”