Discussion by Irving Bieber and Robert Spitzer

15 December 1973 The Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association, yielding to the continued pressure of militant homosexual groups, approved a change in the official guidelines for psychiatric disorders. “Homosexuality as such,” the trustees voted, should no longer be seen as a “mental disorder”; instead, it should be defined as “violation of sexual orientation”. 

Robert Spitzer, M.D., assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University and a member of the APA nomenclature committee, and Irving Bieber, M.D., clinical professor of psychiatry at New York College of Medicine and chairman of the study committee on male homosexuality, discussed the APA's decision. What follows is an abridged version of their discussion.

The point of view currently accepted in industrialized countries according to which homosexuality is not subject to clinical assessment is conditional and devoid of scientific credibility, because it reflects only unjustified political conformism, and not a scientifically reached conclusion.