Skip to content Skip to navigation
University of Warwick
  • Study
  • |
  • Research
  • |
  • Business
  • |
  • Alumni
  • |
  • News
  • |
  • About

University of Warwick
Publications service & WRAP

Highlight your research

  • WRAP
    • Home
    • Search WRAP
    • Browse by Warwick Author
    • Browse WRAP by Year
    • Browse WRAP by Subject
    • Browse WRAP by Department
    • Browse WRAP by Funder
    • Browse Theses by Department
  • Publications Service
    • Home
    • Search Publications Service
    • Browse by Warwick Author
    • Browse Publications service by Year
    • Browse Publications service by Subject
    • Browse Publications service by Department
    • Browse Publications service by Funder
  • Help & Advice
University of Warwick

The Library

  • Login
  • Admin

Effecting science, affecting medicine : homosexuality, the Kinsey reports, and the contested boundaries of psychopathology in the United States, 1948-1965

Tools
- Tools
+ Tools

Chiang, Howard H. (2008) Effecting science, affecting medicine : homosexuality, the Kinsey reports, and the contested boundaries of psychopathology in the United States, 1948-1965. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 44 (4). pp. 300-318. doi:10.1002/jhbs.20343

Research output not available from this repository.

Request-a-Copy directly from author or use local Library Get it For Me service.

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jhbs.20343

Request Changes to record.

Abstract

Despite the well-documented intensive battle between Alfred Kinsey and American psychiatrists around the mid-twentieth century, this paper argues that Kinsey's work, in fact, played a significant role in transforming mental health experts' view of homosexuality starting as far back as the late 1940s and extending all the way through the mid-1960s. After analyzing the way in which Kinsey's work pushed American psychiatrists to re-evaluate their understanding of homosexuality indirectly through the effort of clinical psychologists, I then focus to a greater extent on examples that illustrate how the Kinsey reports directly influenced members of the psychiatric community. In the conclusion, using a Foucauldian conception of “discourse,” I propose that in order to approach the struggle around the pathological status of homosexuality in the 1950s and the 1960s, thinking in terms of a “politics of knowledge” is more promising than simply in terms of a “politics of diagnosis.” Central to the struggle was not merely the matter of medical diagnosis, but larger issues regarding the production of knowledge at an intersection of science and medicine where the parameters of psychopathology were disputed in the context of mid-twentieth-century United States.

Item Type: Journal Article
Divisions: Faculty of Arts > History
Journal or Publication Title: Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
ISSN: 0022-5061
Official Date: September 2008
Dates:
DateEvent
September 2008Published
Volume: 44
Number: 4
Page Range: pp. 300-318
DOI: 10.1002/jhbs.20343
Status: Peer Reviewed
Publication Status: Published
Access rights to Published version: Restricted or Subscription Access

Request changes or add full text files to a record

Repository staff actions (login required)

View Item View Item
twitter

Email us: wrap@warwick.ac.uk
Contact Details
About Us