Homosexuality in Finland: The Decline of Psychoanalysis' Illness Model of Homosexuality

SUMMARY

This paper addresses the ways in which Finnish psychiatric textbooks and psychotherapy practices have conceptualized homosexualities since the beginning of the twentieth century. Liberal views of the first decades changed in the 1950s under the influence of the American adaptational (Rado-Bieber) school of psychoanalysis. These later views were reflected in psychiatric textbooks until the 1990s. This paradigm has been criticized since the 1970s by radical psychiatrists and grassroots movements. Changes in American psychiatric textbooks contributed to the change in Finnish textbooks. However, the majority of mental health professionals still feel that their professional training had not given them adequate sources of information about homo/bisexuality and the treatment teams seldom discuss openly the sexual orientation of their clients.

KEYWORDS:

• Adaptational psychiatry
• anti-psychiatry
• Finnish psychiatry
• Finnish psychoanalysis
• gay patients
• homosexuality
• illness model of homosexuality
• lesbian patients
• mental health professional training
• psychiatric textbooks
• Rado-Bieber school