In the past, homosexuality was considered to be a psychological disorder, up until the APA removed it from its list of mental illnesses. This was due to the fact that homosexuality causes no form of impairment on the individual’s judgment, stability, reliability, or general social and or vocational abilities. This decision made over 30 years ago, has caused a lot of criticism, many believe that the APA’s decision was made due to the amount of influence that the homosexual activism and not according to the scientific data that was collected. There are two possible sides to this assumption about whether or not homosexuality is and should be considered a psychological disorder.
According to an article published in the Scientific Controversies: Case Studies in the Resolution and Closure of Disputes in Science and Technology, edited by H. Tristam Engelhardt Jr., and Arthur Caplan, Cambridge U. Press, 1987. Dr. Irving Bieber, described the attempts for psychiatry to adopt a new perspective regarding sexual normality. During this time the psychiatric professions were moving from the established psychoanalytic theories based on unconscious motivations, in which they claimed that if you cannot visible see distress, dysfunction, and or disability among psychological conditions then it isn’t seen as being disordered. Dr. Bieber while attempting to describe the difficulty of classifying homosexuality concluded that homosexuality was not a normal sexual adaptation. When the APA adapted a new set of criteria for defining psychological disorders, Bieber argued that psychopathology, which could possible show signs of distress, social functioning, and the ability to work effectively could be present in psychopathology. Many others agree that homosexuality is indeed a psychological disorder, and argue that it actually stems from unhappiness in the family that leads to more unhappiness throughout their lives. Many individuals refer to