Jack Drescher

Columbia University | CU · Department of Psychiatry

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Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) mental health is a specialty that has grown in prominence over the past four decades. While historical knowledge of those with diverse gender identities and sexual orientations is quite extensive, only recently has global awareness and acceptance of these diversities become more prominent. Now that...

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) mental health is a specialty that has grown in prominence over the past four decades. While historical knowledge of those with diverse gender identities and sexual orientations is quite extensive, only recently has global awareness and acceptance of these diversities become more prominent. Now that...

This book looks at why and how states should legally ban LGBTQ+ ‘conversion therapy’. Few states have legislated against the practice, with many currently considering its legal ban. Banning ‘Conversion Therapy’ brings together leading academics, legal and medical practitioners, policymakers and activists to illuminate the legislative and non-legisl...

This responds to “Reconsidering Informed Consent for Trans-Identified Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults” by Levine et al., part of a small but growing, critical response to contemporary treatments of gender dysphoric/incongruent (GD/GI) children and adolescents. This author, while disagreeing with Levine et al. and other critics, hopes that w...

This opinion piece responds to Marcus Evans's ‘Freedom to Think’ regarding treating adolescents diagnosed with gender dysphoria (DSM)/gender incongruence (ICD). Evans notes not everything is known about GD/GI, particularly its ‘causes’. Although correct, he presents this fact as a rationale for delaying treatment for all children presenting with GD...

To better understand the relationship between faith and LGBTQ+ identity, we conducted a qualitative analysis of 86 respondents to a general question posed through the Dear Abby column. Responses were anonymized and analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Analysis revealed six themes, reflecting a diversity of lived experience from community reje...

Memorializes Kenneth Lewes (1943-2020). Lewes earned a PhD in Clinical Psychology from University of Michigan (1982). His PhD dissertation was published as a book, ThePsychoanalytic Theory of Male Homosexuality (1988), which has been republished several times and has never been out of print. While Lewes never officially trained to become a psychoan...

Viene criticata la cornice teorica utilizzata da Griffin Hansbury (2017) nel trattamento del caso clinico da lui descritto. Nonostante la critica mossa al binarismo di genere, Hansbury di fatto amplia la teoria di Freud (1922, pp. 488-490) dell'«Io-corpo» introducendo un nuovo concetto binario, il «Vaginale con la V maiuscola» come «controparte sim...

Stuart Sotsky, MD, MPH received his BA with honors in 1968 and his MD and MPH in 1971 from The Johns Hopkins University. He completed his psychiatry residency at Yale University School of Medicine in 1975, where he served as Chief Resident at Yale-New Haven Hospital. Thereafter he completed a research fellowship at the National Institute of Mental...

Ronald E Hellman, MD is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Before his formal retirement in 2017, he was Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine where he worked in the Institute for Advanced Medicine, Center for Transgender Medicine & Surgery. Previously, he was Director of the LGBT A...

Background This study investigated the prevalence and factors associated with counselling and psychotherapy service use among Chinese sexual minority populations. Methods A nationwide cross-sectional study was performed using snowball sampling method, which led to the inclusion of 18,193 participants. Participants’ sociodemographic background, cli...

Aims Compared to their heterosexual peers, youth who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) tend to suffer higher rates of peer victimisation from bullying. However, studies of LGB adolescents' participation as bullies are scarce. We aimed to examine the possible association of sexual minority identity and the heightened risk of not only being...

Importance: Transgender or gender nonconforming (TGNC) adolescents face a wide range of physical and mental health concerns. However, there has been no school-based study to explore the prevalence and mental health status of these adolescents in mainland China. Objectives: To assess the mental well-being of TGNC adolescents in China by comparing...

Harold Kooden, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, a graduate of the University of Chicago and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA). He is a founder and Board Member of the National Gay and Lesbian Health Education Foundation, a Board Member of the New York State Martin Luther King Jr. Institute for Nonviolence, founding member and...

Jack Drescher, MD, is an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst known for his work on the history of theorising about, diagnosing, treating and mistreating sexual minorities. Dr Drescher was a member of the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5 expert working group on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders, which revised the DSM- IV-TR diagnosis...

A full text of this book is not available but it was also published as a journal special issue and the papers from that are available. Please request the papers - thanks!

(Reprinted with permission from the Bulletin of the World Health Organization).

(Copyright © 2009, American Psychiatric Association. Published with permission).

In many ways, psychotherapy with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) patients does not differ from psychotherapy for heterosexual, gender conforming, and cisgender patients. Additionally, concepts and considerations that arise in psychotherapy with LGBT patients can parallel issues that arise in psychotherapy with patients of other stigm...

Dr. Dan Hicks retired as Clinical Professor of Psychiatry from Medstar Georgetown University Medical Center Department of Psychiatry in 2016. He had previously taught medical students, residents, and fellows, and chaired the Grand Rounds committee. He was Medical Director of the Partial Hospital Program and, prior to that, the head of the Consultat...

Religion and spirituality have been associated in many studies with an impact on mental and physical health. However, the relationship between religious faith and transgender identities is not well studied. To understand this relationship, the LGBT Committee of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry undertook a qualitative analysis. Participan...

Marshall Forstein, MD is a psychiatrist who, most recently, was Acting Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Adult Psychiatry Residency Director at Cambridge Health Alliance, and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is Vice Chair for Education and Training and Director of the public sector Psychiatry Residency Program...

In the latest article of JGLMH’s Oral History Series, Emeritus Editor Dr. Jack Drescher interviews Dr. Billy E. Jones, a psychiatrist, now retired, who, among his many accomplishments, served as President and CEO of New York City’s Health and Hospitals Corporation and Commissioner of the New York City Department of Mental Health. He is considered a...

The author believes there may be no way to discuss possible meanings of unwanted sexual overtures that does not arouse strong, uncomfortable feelings. Despite a sense of justice being served when victims of sexual harassment come forward and start naming names, the author asks, should we not distinguish between legitimate concern for people who hav...

In this contribution to JGLMH’s Oral History Series, Emeritus Editor Dr. Jack Drescher interviews Dr. Kenneth Lewes, a clinical psychologist and historian, now retired, who most famously penned The Psychoanalytic Theory of Male Homosexuality, derived from his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Michigan. Dr. Lewes discusses his upbringing and t...

This chapter addresses the psychiatric care of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), and gender non-conforming individuals. Today, psychiatric focus is on treating depression, anxiety, trauma, or other diagnoses in LGBT patients, as well as addressing problems encountered in living as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or gender non-confo...

This chapter addresses the psychiatric care of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), and gender non-conforming individuals. Today, psychiatric focus is on treating depression, anxiety, trauma, or other diagnoses in LGBT patients, as well as addressing problems encountered in living as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or gender non-confo...

In this continuation of JGLMH’s Oral History Series, Dr. Jack Drescher, Emeritus Editor, interviews Dr. John Sweet. Dr. Sweet is now retired from a distinguished career in psychiatry that included service as a military psychiatrist in the US Air Force, directorship of a state outpatient mental health clinic in St. Louis, Missouri, and private pract...

In this addition to JGLMH’s Oral History series, Emeritus Editor Dr. Jack Drescher interviews Dr. Dee Mosbacher. She has served as Medical Director for Mental Health for San Mateo County, California, and as Senior Psychiatrist at the Progress Foundation in San Francisco. She has had a parallel career as a filmmaker and has directed or produced nine...

In this continuation of JGLMH’s Oral History series, Dr. Jack Drescher, Emeritus Editor, interviews Dr. Marlin Mattson. Dr. Mattson is Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and prior to retirement, a longstanding attending psychiatrist at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He has been a highly regarded teacher and...

Background: This study aims to understand suicidal ideation and suicide attempts among transgender individuals through an in-depth analysis of a nation-wide population general survey in China. Methods: Transgender Men (TM) and Women (TW) were investigated through a cross-sectional survey. A structured questionnaire was used to investigate particip...

In this article, Dr. Drescher presents a case of a sexual-minority patient treated by a sexual-minority therapist. The discussant, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Malin Fors, uses the case to reflect on the benefits and limits of the new section of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual, 2nd Edition , called “Nonpathological Conditions That Co...

In this continuation of JGLMH’s Oral History Series, Dr. Jack Drescher, editor emeritus, interviews E. Gerald Dabbs, MD. Dr. Dabbs was in private practice of psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry in Manhattan from 1969–2016. He has been on the Faculty of Weill Cornell Medicine (formerly: Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University)...

The Analyst’s Voice: Narratives on the Developing Psychoanalytic Identity contains personal narratives by twelve psychoanalysts. This chapter by Jack Drescher presents his narrative of professional development as gay physician, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Drescher’s training spanned a period of time when American psychiatry had begun to accept...

When the coeditors of this theme issue of the Transactional Analysis Journal considered whom they wanted to invite to contribute, they decided that voices from outside the transactional analysis community would add richness and diversity of thought. As a result, Dr. Jack Drescher, the American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, who has been practicing...

This chapter begins by briefly reviewing psychiatric and medical theorizing about transgender presentations. In the 19th century, they were usually classified as forms of psychopathology. In the mid-20th century, transsexualism and gender reassignment treatments became more common leading to greater popular, medical, and psychiatric awareness of th...

Aujourd’hui, l’Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry33 est ouverte aux membres gays et lesbiens. Pourtant, quand elle fut fondée en1956 la position du mouvement psychanalytique sur l’homosexualité était pour le moins hostile. Longtemps, ce fut la théorie élaborée par Freud au début de sa carrière – assimilant homosexualité à immaturité –...

The author discusses Kathleen Meigs’ “When Harry Met Jimmie” from the perspective of a graduate of the William Alanson White Institute, of which Harry Stack Sullivan was a cofounder. During the time of the author’s training at White (1988–1992), discussions of Sullivan’s homosexuality seemed more discomforting to faculty than talking about his earl...

En la próxima undécima revisión de la Clasifcación Internacional de las Enfermedades y Problemas de Salud Relacionados (ICD-11) de la Organización Mundial de la Salud, se han propuesto cambios sustanciales a la clasificación de los trastornos mentales y conductuales relacionados con la sexualidad y la identidad de género de la ICD-10. Estos concier...

In the World Health Organization's forthcoming eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-11), substantial changes have been proposed to the ICD-10 classification of mental and behavioural disorders related to sexuality and gender identity. These concern the following ICD-10 disorder groupings...

Conversion therapies are any treatments, including individual talk therapy, behavioral (e.g. aversive stimuli), group therapy or milieu (e.g. “retreats or inpatient treatments” relying on all of the above methods) treatments, which attempt to change an individual’s sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual. However, these practices have be...

In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association published the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). In DSM-5, the gender identity disorder diagnoses were retained, but were given a new name: gender dysphoria (GD), with a GD diagnosis for children and another for adolescents and adults. The World Health Or...

Mental health professionals are repeatedly faced with the dilemma of choosing between stigma of a mental disorder diagnosis and being denied access to care for lack of diagnosis, so we appreciate the points raised by Sam Winter and colleagues and Mauro Cabral and colleagues. However, we disagree with their presentation of the facts. ICD-11's gender...

As part of the development of the eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), WHO appointed a Working Group on Sexual Disorders and Sexual Health to recommend changes necessary in the classification of mental and behavioural disorders in ICD-10 that are related to sexuality and gender identity. This Personal View foc...

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed the diagnosis of "homosexuality" from the second edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). This resulted after comparing competing theories, those that pathologized homosexuality and those that viewed it as normal. In an effort to explain how that decision came about, this pa...

The American Psychiatric Association’s Principles of Medical Ethics emphasize competence, respect and up-to-date knowledge as a basis for appropriate professional behavior toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) patients. This chapter first reviews historical psychiatric attitudes towards LGBT patients that could be construed, at best...

George Weinberg, PhD is interviewed for the Oral History Series by Jack Drescher, editor emeritus of the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Mental Health. Dr. Weinberg, a clinical psychologist in New York City, coined the term homophobia in his 1972 book Society and the Healthy Homosexual. He has been an activist and ally to the gay community for decades a...

Although homosexuality was depathologized in the last century and the majority of mental health professionals consider it to be a normal variant of human sexuality, some psychologists and psychiatrists still have negative attitudes toward lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) clients. Sometimes they provide interventions aimed at changing sexual orientat...

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) recently completed a several year process of revising the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). During that time, there were objections raised to retaining DSM's gender identity disorder diagnoses and calls to remove them, just as homosexuality had been removed...

Gender Dysphoria (GD) in Childhood is primary a clinical diagnosis of unknown etiology with no physical or laboratory findings. Symptoms may develop as early as age 2 years. Gender Dysphoria in Children (GDC) is characterized by a marked incongruence, of at least 6 months' duration, between a prepubescent child's experienced/expressed gender and as...

This is a discussion of Sandra Silverman’s clinical paper “The Colonized Mind: Gender, Trauma, and Mentalization.” Her patient, David née Ava, started early in life as a gender variant child. In adolescence, she became more stereotypically gender conforming. She entered treatment with Silverman as a young adult who was feeling great shame about bot...

This paper was presented at a 2013 conference at the United Nations Church Center in New York City. The conference, “Selling the Promise of Change: International Health and Policy Consequences of Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE),” was sponsored by the NGO Committee on Human Rights and the NGO Committee on HIV/AIDS. The paper begins with a r...

Evidence indicates that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) populations are at increased risk for suicide. This article reviews what is known and unknown about LGBT suicide risk, discusses risk and protective factors for LGBT adolescents and adults, and provides recommendations for assessing and treating LGBT patients.

The World Health Organization is developing the 11th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-11), planned for publication in 2017. The Working Group on the Classification of Sexual Disorders and Sexual Health was charged with reviewing and making recommendations on disease categories rel...

Transgender issues and transgender rights have become increasingly a matter of media attention and public policy debates. Reflecting changes in psychiatric perspectives, the diagnosis of “trans‐sexualism” first appeared in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems in 1975 and shortly thereafter, in 1980, i...