Psychoanalysts in the U.S. are apologizing for previously labeling homosexuality a psychological disorder, almost two weeks after the NYPD apologized for the 1969 police raid on the Stonewall Inn that ignited a movement, The Hill reports.
“It is long past time to recognize and apologize for our role in the discrimination and trauma caused by our profession,” Lee Jaffe, President of the American Psychoanalytic Association, said in a statement. “We all know that hearing the words ‘we are sorry’ is important to healing past trauma.”
Edmund Burgler’s 1957 text, Homosexual: Disease or Way of Life?, exacerbated the pathologizing of the LGBTQIA+ community, with psychoanalysts following suit by legitimizing the idea that homosexuality was treatable.
This is the first time that a mental health organization in the United States has issued an apology for this kind of institutional cis-hetero violence, and “arguably one of the first medical associations to do so,” USA Today reports.
Read APsaA’s full statement below:
Read more at USA Today.