Auto-archaeology of Homosexuality: A Foucauldian Reading of the Psychiatric–Industrial Complex

Abstract

This essay explores two primary questions. (1) Can there be a Foucauldian autoethnography? (2) How might a Foucault-driven autoethnography detail my experiences in the psychiatric–industrial complex? Pulling largely from Michel Foucault's earliest work History of Madness, I look at how interconnected organizations have rendered homosexuality as senseless, used a “psychiatrization of perverse pleasure” to rationalize this senselessness, and relied on expensive psychoanalysis and pharmaceuticals to invoke the madness they claim to cure.

Keywords:

• Autoethnography
• Foucault
• Homophobia
• Homosexuality
• Psychiatry

Notes

[1] Throughout the essay, I use the term “homosexuality” to call attention to a relic of “madness” produced by nineteenth-century sexologists and maintained by the psychiatric–industrial complex. “Homosexuality” suggests same-sex sexual inclinations are abnormalities that need to be fixed. My use of the term is both ironic and intended to critique the psychological objectification of gays and lesbians.

[2] I use pseudonyms throughout the essay to conceal the identities of peers, administrators, doctors, and patients.

[3] My stepbrother is an activist who publicly advocates rights for mentally disabled and gay people. During the 1980s, he was an officer in the Association for Retarded Citizens. His history of mental illness is a matter of public record.

[4] The manual claims therapists may assign the label if they can positively identify certain psychotic symptoms, like “delusions, hallucinations, incoherence, loosening of associations, markedly illogical thinking, or behavior that is grossly disorganized or catatonic” (APA 202–203). Because Rhonda's psychoeducational evaluation of me does not mention delusions, hallucinations, grossly disorganized behavior, incoherence, or catatonia, I assume her diagnosis was grounded in what she perceived to be my loosening associations and markedly illogical thinking. Rhonda's only reference to psychosis in her diagnostic summary includes a single sentence: “He displays an immature, inadequate personality with a thought disorder of psychotic proportions” (emphasis added). Sure enough, the APA lists “loosening associations” as the most common example of “formal thought disorder.” The term loosening associations describes when a patient's “ideas shift from one subject to another completely unrelated subject, without the speaker showing any awareness that the topics are unconnected” (APA 182). Only incomprehensible speech qualifies as “incoherent.” In Rhonda's five-page evaluation of my behavior, no quantitative or qualitative evidence supports her claim that I “shift from one [conversational] subject to another completely unrelated subject.” My “thought disorder,” like my ultimate diagnosis, was ill-defined.