Posted on 01/06/2006 4:48:13 PM PST by lizol
California Psychologist Wants 'Extreme Bias' Against Homosexuals Added To 'DSM'
January 6, 2006 - In early December 2005, Washington Post writer Shankar Vedantam reported on the efforts of UCLA psychology professor Edward Dunbar to encourage the psychiatric community to add "extreme bias" against homosexuals (or ethnic groups) added to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Professor Dunbar is considered an expert on hate crimes and serves as a consultant with the Los Angeles City Police Department, the LA Unified School District and the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center.
The Post article quotes Darrel A. Regier, director of research at the APA who supports research into whether pathological bias is a disorder but wonders if adding it to the DSM would be useful. "If you're going to put racism into the next edition of DSM, you would have enormous criticism." Critics would ask, "'Are you pathologizing all of life? You better be prepared to defend that classification."
Sally Satel, author of PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine, calls Dunbar's proposal "absurd" and says such a diagnosis could be used by hate crime perpetrators to escape punishment.
However, Alvin F. Poussaint, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School agrees with Dunbar and characterizes individuals with extreme bias as "delusional." He notes: "They imagine people are going to do all kinds of bad things and hurt them, and feel they have to do something to protect themselves. When they reach that stage, they are very impaired."
Shama Chaiken, with the California Department of Corrections also agrees with Dunbar. "We treat racism and homophobia as delusional disorders."
Howdy, punster. Trotting out your favorite cherry-picked quotes, eh?
How's the gay agenda these days?
What a novel idea! Accuse those who criticize the "gay" agenda by saying THEY'RE REALLY HOMOSEXUALS THEMSELVES!
Great idea, that'll shut up the homophobes!
What a great mind you have, thinking that one up. I stand in awe.
"That sounds like pathological behavior."
That bit of ill-logic is pathetic and plain stupid. If I am adamantly and openly against murder does that make me a closet murderer and pathological?
LOL you keep repeating this 'reputation' thing -its almost like the proverbial high school girl that get a bad 're' because some jerk keeps spreading lies about her...
Where is the meat punster? The 'reputation' and 'notoriety' you wish to repeatedly broadcast in MSM fashion must have some factual basis.
I would find it hard to belief that an FR member not promoting propaganda supporting the homosexual agenda would be spreading such rumors premised only upon the accusations of "notorious" homosexual activists...
These are the same people who were sure that people had repressed memories that they didn't, in fact, have.
Me thinks that the delusional problem, it is that people with disturbance have convinced some in society that the disturbance is elsewhere. From this article, they're still working on that.
I'm curious how one determines that another person is extremely biased against homosexuals or ethnic groups. If a person lives in an all-black neighborhood and attends a black college is he presumptively biased against whites and Hispanics? How does he prove the presumption false? Or would the presumption only apply to white people who live in predominantly white neighborhoods? If so that is evidence of how biased this exercise really is.
Next question: Is holding politically incorrect viewpoints really proof of bias? I submit it is more likely to be just the opposite: evidence of objectivity. A person who does not kowtow to the party line is not necessarily a biased ideologue. He may just be the most objective person around, someone who rejects PC BS and bases his opinions on real evidence rather than simply parrot what is expected of him.
Yes, but, given that quote ("We treat racism and homophobia as delusional disorders")...the ISSUE of actual mental wellbeing, or lack thereof, is as to those who believe they are empowered to make those evaluations (who is displaying "homophobia" and who is displaying "racism").
And, how either/both of those is represented by what.
It's actually, as in, in reality, delusional that these two tags are so easily applied by emotionally disturbed people about others who make other choices. Among other things...
WOW touche'!!!!! Couldn't have said that better myself!!
Yeah, agreed. The key point about, for example, the Matthew Shephard murder was that it was committed by murderers. Who were also homosexual. But both those significant points were outright refused in any discussion about Shephard's sad demise.
Murderers murder. The only "hate" element in that particular case (Shephard) was that it was murder that killed Matthew Shephard. Although the murderer was also homosexual (at least the one of the two).
Somehow, that's reduced to the problem of generalized "people" "hating" "homosexuals" but the truth of it was that Shephard, a homosexual, was killed by another homosexual. But it was murder that took his life, and a murderer who took it.
It's still, however, talked up to represent the result by social "homophobia" about homosexuality. Which seems to be the ultimate insult to Shephard himself, in my view.
Exactly. I've written about this before, elsewhere on FR...but the goal of "psychiatry" under socialism is to prove "unwell, diseased" anyone or any perspective that does not replicate the social meme. It happened in the Soviet Union, it's happened in Cuba under Castro, it's likely to be happening in South America given Castro's commisserations with Chavez in militarized "health care" (military personnel functioning as "physicians" on "aid" missions among other countries, which Castro prides himself in fostering).
The goal of socialized medicine, unfortunately, eventually seeks to "prescribe socialism" by way of wellness or lack thereof.
Yet another reason to revile Hillary, Howard, Kerry and Kennedy.
Wouldn't it be something if "homophobia" were hardwired into the male brain as some sort of a survival mechanism through evolution and was therefore as blameless and shameless as, oh, say homosexuality as an expression of genetics is assumed to be......
There is great difference in clinical practice and educational foundation between "psychologists" and "psychiatrists." Just to make that point here.
However, I have encountered some truly nutty among both fields, and I reserve those adjectives ("truly nutty") for the most egregiously disturbed.
A psychiatrist in CA (medical degree and license) who had been institutionalized for paranoid schizophrenia but had managed to keep that quiet inorder to maintain his license. It wasn't so much the license that was the disturbance but that the guy WAS, in fact, a paranoid schizophrenic who was making determinations about other vulnerable persons.
As to psychologists, I've heard worse.
I agree that it appears to be a case of the most disturbed among us humans who seeks out the field of, especially, psychology (a social science). Psychiatry, at least, requires a more profound education and clinical expertise.
There's a lot to be said about homosexuals who victimize other homosexuals but few homosexuals are willing to admit that that occurs. When and if they do, however, inevitably it's blamed on heterosexuals' "homophobia" somehow "forcing" homosexuals to go violent upon one another. Or dishonest otherwise, as you describe.
I now regret responding...
my bad.
~;-]
Yes, I know the difference between Psychologists and Psychiatrists, the latter does have medical training, never the less they will defer to their major and not their minor when diagnosing and it's still my opinion that their major is a hyped version of Sociology.
I wonder if they can add "Spends too much time on FreeRepublic" to the list while they're at it.
I can file for psychological counselling and maybe disability compensation!
I wasn't directing that comment specifically to you, just including it in the discussion in general. Something you wrote earlier brought that to mind.
I agree that the entire "mental health" studies, including psychiatry, is largely a delivery of Sociology: what is "normal" and "abnormal" is only thus based upon social acceptability and/or responses by a mean. The "mean" study is to be questioned more often than it is, however.
And, the economics of health care have to be considered here because certain "conditions" only become so when there's funding available to provide a clinical response. Or a chemical one.
Some of that is a good outcome of free enterprise but inevitably, once health care becomes publicly funded, it's at the mercy of the politically motivated and that's usually the most emphatically pursued by people with the most offensive (or extreme) behaviors in search of "acceptance."
I also agree with something earlier written here to suggest that the heterosexual rejection of many aspects of homosexuality is almost certainly biologically motivated. Most of who and what we are as humans is.
However, the biological imperative to reproduce is secondary only to that of survival and homosexuality poses a distraction -- if not a destructive use of resources on a survivalist level (you're a tribe with limited resources and the one or few individuals in that tribe who are not reproducing are not contributing, on a very primal level, and, worse, they are using resources that reproduction would otherwise have available, so, there's got to be some sort of motivation to "avoid" if not admonish people who pose those problems, however subtle).
Worth considering. At this point, it seems that homosexuality is more tolerated within some correlation to the population: the larger it becomes, the more "tolerated" are behaviors that would otherwise be completely rejected by most.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
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