Bisexual identity development was not documented professionally until Fritz Klein's The Bisexual Option in 1993, and Martin Weinberg, Colin Williams, and Douglas Pryor's Dual Attraction: Understanding Bisexuality in 1994.

Sponsor Message.

Professional writings that depathologize transgender identity development have only become available within recent years. These include Mildred Brown's True Selves (1996), Gianna Israel's Transgender Care (1998), Randi Ettner's Gender Loving Care (1999), and Arlene Istar Lev's Transgender Emergence (2004). Affirmative psychological models of bisexual and transgender psychotherapy are still rare, and clinical models continue overwhelmingly to emphasize psychopathology.

Conclusion

Within a postmodern worldview, gay affirmative therapy may appear to be an historic relic that was once necessary to counterbalance the homophobia of the extant therapeutic systems. Certainly, a more contemporary glbtq affirmative therapy needs to have a broader understanding of sex and gender identity development within a cross cultural context, and to recognize the numerous pathways and outcomes for healthy human psychosexual identity formation.

Although the term "gay affirmative" does not do justice to the wide array of sexual and gender identities and sexual minority communities included under the banner of glbtq identity, the basic need for psychotherapeutic models that embrace and support diverse sexual expressions remains urgent. Gay affirmative psychotherapy created the necessary foundation: a therapeutic model that viewed same-sex identity and relationships as potentially healthy and natural.

The work to depathologize bisexuality and gender-variant identities continues, but would not be possible without the existence of gay affirmative psychotherapy. Given the power mental health institutions have wielded over the lives of glbtq people, it is doubtful that many legal rights--domestic partnership benefits, gay marriage, same-sex adoption--would have been granted to a population deemed mentally ill.

It is to be noted, however, that there are still researchers and clinicians such as Irving Bieber, Joseph Nicolosi, Charles Socarides, and organizations such as the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality [NARTH] that still view homosexuality as psychopathology and are opposed to gay affirmative psychotherapy models.

Moreover, gay affirmative psychotherapy has not yet been fully integrated within the psychological or social work professions, and even those psychotherapists who profess to be accepting often lack in-depth education on the psychosocial issues and needs of glbtq people.

Nevertheless, glbtq affirmative models of therapy are accepted today within the mainstream of helping professions, and have the institutional support of most major professional organizations, including the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the National Association of Social Workers, which have all have developed strong policy statements depathologizing homosexuality and supporting same-sex relationships and gay families.

A form of behavior modification that employs unpleasant and sometimes painful stimuli, aversion therapy was one of the more popular treatments for homosexuality and cross-dressing in the 1950s and 1960s.

In recent years there has been a push for glbtq-sensitive counselor training and glbtq-affirmative counseling, which, although occurring slowly and encountering resistance, marks a significant move in a positive direction.

Glbtq identity development has not yet been fully integrated into mainstream theories of psychological development, but recent work promises to further our understanding of the life experiences of glbtq people.

Glbtq family therapy is a relatively new field that merges gay-affirmative therapy with family systems theory; its goal is to help glbtq people create and maintain healthy families.

Psychoanalysis, which began as a therapeutic procedure, ultimately became one of the most powerful methods of cultural analysis and critique of the twentieth-century.

Reparative therapy is a dangerously misguided attempt, supported by homophobic religious organizations, to change a person's sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual.

A compulsive behavior that completely dominates the addict's life, sexual addiction is an intimacy disorder that frequently causes severe stress on the addict and his or her friends and family.

Since the1990s, Social Work has slowly become a more glbtq-friendly profession.

Australian political scientist and self-described "international activist-academic" Dennis Altman has studied both the glbtq political movement and the globalization of sexual identities.

Historian, biographer, essayist, playwright, and academic, Martin Bauml Duberman is an astute commentator on gender and race issues and a pioneer in glbtq studies.

The founder of psychoanalysis and the discoverer of the unconscious, Sigmund Freud initiated a fundamental transformation in the self-understanding of Western men and women, including especially the role of sexuality.

A pioneer in the American gay rights movement, Barbara Gittings worked tirelessly within the American Library Association to make material with glbtq content more accessible to the reading public.

American psychologist Evelyn Hooker's pioneering studies on male homosexuality in the 1950s and 1960s challenged the "sickness" model of homosexuality then prevalent.

One of the founding fathers of the American gay rights movement, Frank Kameny helped radicalize the homophile movement, preparing the way for the mass movement for equality initiated by the Stonewall Riots of 1969.

The most important sex researcher of the twentieth century, Alfred C. Kinsey contributed groundbreaking studies of male and female sexual behavior in America.

Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin were among the founders of a lesbian liberation movement that developed and enlarged the very definition of lesbianism.

When the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses, it added in its place "Gender Identity Disorder in Childhood," or "The Sissy Boy Syndrome."