Am J Psychiatry 1981; 138:210-215
Copyright © 1981 by American Psychiatric Association
The diagnostic status of homosexuality in DSM-III: a reformulation of the issues
RL Spitzer
In 1973 homosexuality per se was removed from the DSM-II classification of
mental disorders and replaced by the category Sexual Orientation
Disturbance. This represented a compromise between the view that
preferential homosexuality is invariably a mental disorder and the view
that it is merely a normal sexual variant. While the 1973 DSM-II
controversy was highly public, more recently a related but less public
controversy involved what became the DSM-III category of Ego-dystonic
Homosexuality. The author presents the DSM-III controversy and a
reformulation of the issues involved in the diagnostic status of
homosexuality. He argues that what is at issue is a value judgment about
heterosexuality, rather than a factual dispute about homosexuality.
