Title: Mental Health and Social Norms | The One Best Way
Headings: Mental Health and Social Norms
Mental Health and Social Norms
[This was from 2005.]

Content: Mental Health and Social Norms | The One Best Way
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Mental Health and Social Norms
Posted on July 9, 2010 by jonwrowe
[This was from 2005.] The death of Charles Socarides has brought to mind a regrettable tendency (one that often borders on tyranny) of the mental health profession. Socarides, if you don’t know, was one of the godfathers of the “homosexuality is a mental illness” school of thought. And (Providentially, in my opinion) one of his sons turned out to be not just gay but one of the leading gay rights activists of the 90s. The “regrettable tendency” to which I refer is the (mis)use of the concept of “mental illness” to enforce moral or social norms. Back in Socarides’s day, it was the 1950s style social conservative morality which was “medicalized.” Today it’s PC. Previously, homosexuality and other behaviors which violated “traditional morality” were “mental illnesses.” Today “racism” and “homophobia” are mental illnesses (or at least, some folks within the profession seriously advance this notion). As Pete Townsend put it: “