An Interview with David R. Kessler, MD

ABSTRACT

David R. Kessler, MD, was the first elected president of the San Francisco-based gay doctors group—Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights (BAPHR)—from 1978 to 1980. He was reelected BAPHR president in 1988. From 1980–1982 he was president of the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists, which was then known as the Gay Caucus of Members of the American Psychiatric Association. He has been a member of the boards of directors of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the NAMES Project.

Dr. Kessler endowed the David R. Kessler lectures in Lesbian and Gay Studies at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) of the City University of New York. This series, the first of its kind at an academic institution, has honored prominent figures in the lesbian and gay community with an annual lecture since its inception in 1992. Past honorees have included Edmund White, Judith Butler, Samuel Delany, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and John D'Emilio. The first 10 Kessler lectures have been published as a book (CLAGS, 2003).

Dr. Kessler completed his medical degree at Yale in 1955 and his psychiatry residency at Yale in 1961. He was on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco Medical School and on the full-time staff of the Langley Porter Institute from 1962 until his retirement as Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in 1986. His other professional role has been as a forensic psychiatrist consulting to the California courts, work which he has continued after his retirement. JGLMH spoke with Dr. Kessler by phone from his San Francisco home.

KEYWORDS:

• Oral history
• homosexuality
• psychiatry
• gay and lesbian
• activism

Mary E. Barber is Director of Community Services, Rockland Psychiatric Center, Orangeburg, NY; Past President of the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists.

Notes

¹ See Hire, R.O. (2001), An interview with Frank Rundle, M.D. J. Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy, 5(2):83–97.

² See Lynch, P.E. (2003), An interview with Richard C. Pillard, MD. J. Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy, 7(4):63–70.

³ James Krajeski, MD, is a long-time AGLP member and one of its past presidents. Dr. Krajski is presently editor of the APA newspaper, Psychiatric News.

⁴ Harvey Milk was an openly gay city supervisor in 1970s San Francisco, shot to death by a political rival. His life story is told in Shilts, R. (1982), The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. New York: St. Martin's Press.

⁵ “… Dr. David Kessler, psychiatrist on the staff of the University of California Medical School and the Langley-Porter Psychiatric Clinic, and president of the Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights, a group of more than 250 homosexual doctors and psychiatrists, spoke. ‘Harvey asked us all to come out to our families and friends, to the people we work with and to those we shop from … so that we can shatter the myth, once and for all, that we were freaks, weirdos, or sickies … Harvey Milk fought for us. Now it is our turn to fight for him.’ Inside the Opera House, 4,000 people rose as one to shout.” The piece concludes with, “Harvey Milk … Dr. David Kessler—we have no one like you here (Kramer, 1978).”

⁶ See Rosario, V.A. (2003), An interview with Judd Marmor, MD. J. Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy, 7(4):23–34.

⁷ Ego-dystonic homosexuality was in the DSM-III (APA, 1980) and removed from the DSM-III-R in 1987.