In the Shadow of Diagnosis - Psychiatric Power and Queer Life

"Regina Kunzel here draws upon previously unseen case files to argue for a much subtler understanding of how 20th-century LGBTQ Americans conceived of themselves and the diagnoses they received from psychiatrists, showing the ways in which they assimilated, accommodated, challenged, rejected, and rearticulated the judgment that they were sick. She argues that, as central as psychiatry was to LGBTQ identity, the discipline's own expanding claims to authority were anchored in its assertion of expertise over gender and sexual difference. That is, shrinks told people they were sick; but in both acquiescing to and resisting this diagnosis, those people showed that shrinks were powerful"--

About the author

Regina Kunzel is the Larned Professor of History and Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. Kunzel is the author of Criminal Intimacy: Prison and the Uneven History of Modern American Sexuality, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Product details

• Authors: Regina Kunzel, Kunzel Regina
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.04.2024
• EAN: 9780226830193
• ISBN: 978-0-226-83019-3
• No. of pages: 232
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; History, MEDICAL / Psychiatry / General, HISTORY / United States / 20th Century, United States of America, USA, General and world history, HISTORY / LGBTQ+, LGBTQ+ Studies / topics