You can not see it, but it's still there. This is especially noticeable when the emotional well-being is unbalanced. The dictionary gives a clear answer: "psyche" means the "totality of human feeling". If this is out of balance, it is called mental disorder, not mental illness.
The World Health Organization (WHO) coined this term because, in the sense of stigmatization, it is more neutral in value than the concept of mental illness and therefore less burdensome for those affected.
Within psychoanalysis, there is still the (traditional) view that homosexuality is misguided heterosexuality and pathological in nature. Among other things, this view is corroborated by the fact that even today homosexuality is widely regarded as a criterion for keeping candidates away from psychoanalytic training. In contrast, Rohde-Dachser shows that male as well as female homosexuality is to be understood as a possible component of the psychosexual development of men and women and at the same time as part of a sexual potential that humans possess and which they use for different purposes: both in the service of pleasure and in the service of reproduction (survival)
After choosing the title of this book many would argue that I’m proably not neutral on the topic of homosexuality. And honestly the title all by itself is only screaming for trouble. Like the WHO I do not want to stigmatize or burden anyone because mental disorders can affect anyone but everyone chooses to solve it differently.
Some can or can’t admit that they have a disorder, the ones that do are not neccessarily better of because some of them can be convinced that they don’t need help and even if they know they need help there are many hurdles more to take until a successful treatment is completed. However, most of them, if diagnosed early, can be treated and even cured in the same way as many physical ailments.
This book is not about curing or getting rid of homosexuality. Instead it is about the 2 sexual potentials of humans where one of them seems to be categorized as a disorder if it is more prononced then the other. Weather male or female, heterosexual or homosexual, both potentials exist and are fundamental for human survival and therefore considered healthy.
The argument is that homosexuals have a mental disorder because, it is very likely that they have a much higher priorotized „pleasure potential“ and a too low or non existing „reproduction potential“
Of course there are also heterosexual males and females that also have a mental disorder due to a priorotized pleasure potential and a low reproduction potential.
Normally we wouldnt say they have a mental disorder, we would rather say they just dont want to have kids. In my opinion and according to the dictionary, this is considered as a disorder, disease or illness. The WHO however seems to dissagree that homosexuality is a mental disorder.
The WHO, founded in 1948, records diseases in a catalog, the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). The ICD systematically lists diseases and causes of death and assigns them a specific code. Doctors can use the ICD notations to encrypt their diagnoses internationally. In the 9th edition of the ICD, which was valid until 1992, homosexuality appeared under the 302.0 class code as its own disease. In the following version of ICD-10, which is still valid today, the same-sex tendency did not turn up.
Wich you can imagine was celebrated by the LGBT community and could’ve been considered a big step towards acceptance in the social norm. But I honestly think the WHO didnt help the LGBT community, instead they left everbody with the mental disorder homosexuality alone. And instead of being helped by doctors, they have to rely on their own self healing abilities or by moraly questionable catholic church camps. I think the last mentioned shouldnt be an option in the 21st century. But let’s go back in history
In antiquity, as in many other cultures, same-sex love was and is not considered morally offensive or pathological, but rather as a form of unadulterated human sexuality. In the European Middle Ages, however, it soon ranked among other allegedly unnatural sexual acts under the generic term sodomy. Not only the ecclesiastical moral guardians, but also the temporal jurisdiction raged over them.
Even in modern times and to the present day, people caught in same-sex sexual practices had to expect prosecution. In Germany, this was regulated by Article 175 of the Penal Code, which criminalized sexual acts between persons of male sex. The Law Passage existed since the first days of the German Reich in 1871, was further aggravated by the National Socialists and survived in the first decades of the Federal Republic. He envisaged imprisonment of six months to five years, in "difficult cases" (§ 175a) even up to ten years.
In 1969, a first reform of the paragraph restricted the criminal offense to homosexual acts with male adolescents under the age of 21, in a second step in 1973 only to male adolescents under the age of 18. As a result, the number of convictions fell sharply - but the controversial regulation was abolished in 1994 as part of the alignment with the former GDR.
Psychiatry began to be interested in homosexuality in the mid-19th century - in 1869, the Berlin neurologist Carl Westphal published one of the first scientific essays on the subject. Although not all psychologists considered homosexuality to be pathological aberration, even Sigmund Freud disagreed in some points.
Psychosexual Development Phases
Within the framework of the psychoanalytic theory by Sigmund Freud the following psychosexual development phases are distinguished:
I. oral phase, up to 1.5 years
Lust gain through irritation of the oral cavity and lips.
In case of disturbances in this phase it can come to
- neurotic depressions
- Addiction and sexual disorders
- narcissistic disorders
- psychosomatic disorders
- anxiety neuroses
- contact disturbances (proximity / distance problems)
- lack of personal and external trust
II. Anal phase, 2./3. years of age
Employment with one's own excretory organs. Cleanliness education begins.
In case of disturbances in this phase following can happen
- obsessional neuroses
- Anankastic personality disorders
III. phallic phase, 4th - 6th years of age
Lustgain over the genital organs. Here also the Oedipus complex is settled.
In case of disturbances in this phase following can happen
- phobias
- conversion symptoms
- sexual disorders
- Partnership problems
IV. Latency phase, 6. - 10. years of age
Standstill of libido development. Training of ICH functions.
In case of disturbances in this phase following can happen
- Contact disturbances
- Concentration and performance weakness
- Autistic and autoaggressive developments
V. Puberty phase / adolescence
In case of disturbances in this phase following can happen
- Disorders of gender identity
Compliance Overview - Mental
Disorder
In clinical psychology or psychiatry, which deals with mental disorders, they are structured as mentioned before, to a code of the WHO, in order to make the diagnosis possible. This code is called ICD-10 (International Classification of Diseases) and classifies more than 500 mental disorders,(Homosexuality is not on that list) for example, according to affectivity or delusion. This also results in the so-called F-diagnoses, which are e.g. can be found on the transfer slips of psychiatrists, and for depression, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder (manic-depressive). In addition, there is also the Codex DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).
Mental disorders are no longer a single fate today. Almost one in three people is estimated to suffer from mental illness at least once in their lives. This is also noticeable in the economy: Mental disorders now take fourth place when it comes to sick leave. In addition, most of the missing days have been due to mental disorders for years. Which is worrying as it is a rapidly ascending trend.
In the year 2020 the world is alot more tolerant towards homosexuality compared to the past centurys. Back then the Church didnt support gay marriage, back then people never just came out and didnt care what others would think. In fact back then Homosexuals faced the same enviromental challanges, either with themselves, their familys or their sorrounding socity, as other mental disorders have.
Every person is different and everyone can be affected by a mental disorder. Not everybody can handle a diagnosis they recieve from a doctor the same way. Cancer patients for example deal differently, once they find out about their health situation. Some of them are as positive as you can be and are open for any kind of therapy, weather its chemotherapy, radiotherapy, moleculare biological therapy, hormone therapy or surgery. Some of them are against all medical sugguestions and prefer not to spent their possible last days in a hospital hoping for a successful cure.
Just like Cancer patients are all different, the compliance of people with diabetes couldnt be more simular. With Typ I or Typ II your pankreas isnt able to produce enough or any insulin at all. Therefore they have to keep a strict insulin, nutrition and exercise therapy.
Because diabetes patients know what complications and sequelae they would expect there isnt a compliance problem... You would think...
...Some studies examined the influence of disease characteristics on compliance
of the patients. Comparing different diseases with regard to the non-compliance rates among each other results in significant differences
|
Diagnose
|
Non-Compliance %
|
|
Asthma
|
20%
|
|
Arthritis
|
55-71%
|
|
Diabetes mellitus
|
40-50%
|
|
Epilepsie
|
30-50%
|
|
Hypertonie
|
40%
|
Investigations in persons with psychiatric disorders indicate that
Patients with schizophrenia or personality disorder have a less
compliant behavior as patients with other psychiatric disorders
The nature of the disease itself thus appears to be the extent of compliance
diabetes mellitus is one of the diseases with higher NonCompliance rates.
But what would be the compliance for a mental or personality disorder like homosexuality? As the WHO no longer defines it as a disorder there isnt any valuable data because doctors don’t treat patients with homosexuality and they also dont accumulate any data because there arent any valid studies or surveys to pick from.
And since we dont have enough data to awnser this question, we can only guess and unfold the sexual potentials a bit more.
Sexual Potentials
As mentined before humans have 2 sexual potentials both of them equally important but individually pronounced just like all other human attributes that make everyone unique.
Although the degree and correlation between the 2 potentials decide about health or disorder.
If both sexual potentials are in a normal state all sexual orientations would come into question. (see graph 1 on the next page)
If the sexual potential of plesure would be dominantly high and the potential of survival would be extreamly low, we could already take a mental disorder into consideration.
A variety of mental disorders could apply to all sexual orientations. (see graph2)
So far all potential correlations resulted in being applicable to all sexual orientations. But there is a distinction if the potential of survival is dominantly high and the potential of plesure is very low. Because this would only apply to Heterosexual males/females. (see graph3)
The reason why it can’t apply to Homosexual males/females is because the main intention of having sex is reproduction (service of survival) and Homosexuals are not capable to reproduce during their exercise of sexual intercourse.
There is one more distinction of the sexual orientations which is inevitable and this time it only applys to the Homosexual males and females and could lead to or be considered as a mental disorder. (see graph4)
After unfolding the sexual potentials in a short and superficial way I will dive in much deeper and try to analyze this topic a bit more but in order to do that it is neccessary to untangle topics like:
Cormorbiditys of Homosexuality
The WHO wants to delete transsexuality from the list of mental illnesses. Yes Transsexuality is still on the ICD Catalog but that could change in the future. "We believe this may reduce stigma and increase their social acceptance," said Lale Say, the WHO coordinator for reproductive health. The UN organization submitted its revised disease catalog, ICD-11 for short, with 55,000 illnesses, injuries and causes of death.
In it, WHO lists transsexuality no longer under "mental behavioral and developmental disorders" but in a new chapter on sexual health. It defines "gender incongruence" as "a clear and persistent lack of agreement between the experienced and the assigned gender".
The new catalog still has to be approved by the UN member states. And will be submitted to them end of 2019 and could enter into force on January 1st 2022. Lale Say, expects the countries to agree, even though transsexuals are largely discriminated against compared to homosexuals.
The reason I am mentioning all of this at the start of this chapter is because transsexuality could be considered as a cormorbidity of homosexuality. The word cormorbidity describes the presence of one or more additional conditions co-occurring with (that is, concomitant or concurrent with) a primary condition; in the countable sense of the term, a comorbidity is a additional condition. The additional condition may also be a behavioral or mental disorder.
Saying that homosexuality is a disease/disorder/illness and that transsexuality is a cormorbidity of it can be easyli misunderstood as being offensive or discriminating against the conserned. But as mentioned in the beginning the core of this argument lie’s in helping the conserned. The WHO stated that removing the disease from the catalog reduces stigmatization and increases acceptance. Which could be true but it is not really helping the ones who have the disease.
For example, the latest revision of the WHO catalog will recognizes „video game addiction“ as a disease. The reason why they are doing that is not because they want to stigmatize gaming addicts and lower their social acceptance. I believe they are adding it as a disease because they are trying to provide helpful options, for the ones that accept they have a problem and there are doctors worldwide working on treatment solutions that could even be covered by insurance.