Abstract
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.
Highlights
Challenging the psycho-pathologisation of homosexuality was a key focus of struggle for the gay liberation movement, and a touchstone issue for the anti-psychiatry movement during the 1960s and 1970s, especially in the US and UK
We know less about the different activist strategies used to contest pathologisation in the UK context, in relation to lesbian sexuality (King & Bartlett, 1999)
A focus on the UK context is important since there is less written on this subject, especially regarding women’s activism
Summary
Challenging the psycho-pathologisation of homosexuality was a key focus of struggle for the gay liberation movement, and a touchstone issue for the anti-psychiatry movement during the 1960s and 1970s, especially in the US and UK. We know less about the different activist strategies used to contest pathologisation in the UK context, in relation to lesbian sexuality (King & Bartlett, 1999). Whilst the emancipation of homosexuality from the “registers of mental pathology” helped secure the conditions of possibility for lesbian and gay rights, the historical privileging of the 1970s US de-classification campaign has “eclipsed more nuanced challenges to psy authority and obscured more complex activist engagements with sexuality, mental illness, and the psy professions” A focus on the UK context is important since there is less written on this subject, especially regarding women’s activism. Historiography in this field has typically focused on white, cisgender, gay male actors in US context (Hegarty & Rutherford, 2019). Notable exceptions include: Rebecca Jennings’ (2008) detailed account of lesbians and psychiatry in the Journal of British Studies; Alison Oram’s (2007) chapter in The Permissive Society and Its Enemies; Oram and Turnbull’s (2001) commentaries in their Lesbian History Sourcebook; and Katherine Hubbard’s (2019) history of how psychologists used the Rorschach ink blot test to contest the pathologisation of lesbians
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