‘Anomaly’: psychiatry and homosexuality in 1970s Australia

Abstract

Australian legal and medical institutions grappled with the changing status of homosexuality during the 1970s. Historians have argued that psychiatry, as a prominent institution on the subject of homosexuality, was key to its de-medicalisation and therefore contributed to homosexuality’s increasing social acceptance. Following key legal reforms, and the 1973 Clinical Memorandum released by the Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatry, psychiatrists shifted away from treating homosexuality as a pathology. However, several prominent psychiatrists continued to practise therapy on homosexual men. Though aimed at alleviating the distress of their ‘patients’, these therapies reinforced the medical status of homosexuality. This, in spite of progressive reforms by the broader institution of psychiatry, contributed to a medical and social understanding of homosexuality as a medical condition, within a pathological framework. In short, psychiatry in 1970s Australia was a social pressure point on the issue of homosexuality, a place of both relief and medicalisation.