Lisa,

I couldn't agree more with you on the danger presented by the appointment of a dangerous reparatave therapist like Zucker to chair this DSM V workgroup committee. I have been troubled by the recent All Things Considered segment on NPR that described the effect of Zucker's abuse on one of his young victims. I don't have any idea what the powers at the APA might have been thinking when they made this appointment. What can we do about this?

It's bad enough that the APA pathologizes adults with a "mental disorder" when HBS is really a medical condition (albeit one that when untreated or suppressed can have psychiatric side effects), but I cannot stand by silently when the organization flies in the face of the principle of its own February 1998 condemnation of reparative therapy, to name a notorious reparative therapist who abuses children as a part of his treatment regimen to chair this committee.

Where do we sign up?

Joann

At first I thought this was a joke...Zucker and Blanchard?...but now I find - sadly - that it is not. Like Dr. Evil and Mini-Me they are a pair of buffoon-like control freak caricatures, and now we find they are chairing the workgroup on sexual and gender identity disorders (GID)? How absolutely inane! If these two are the best-fit choice for chairing the committee, then someone seriously needs to question the validity of the APA; they are making horrendously stupid decisions that even the most superficial glance can discern. What were they thinking, for crying out loud!!

Oh, wait a minute...I think I get it. There's a common refrain among the working-class when finding themselves overloaded with work, "Hey, think of it as job security!" Well, similarly, perhaps the APA, being a group of practicing and practical psychiatrists (right?), are enacting their own form of guaranteed job security. With the proliferation of transgenderism over the last decade or so, what better route to ensure sustained job security than to have Zucker and Blanchard merge their beliefs into the NEW and IMPROVED DSM where GID will morph into a newer, bigger, brighter, shinier, more needy form of psychological disorder in need of doctoring and psychological salvation? Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!! Kudos to the APA for their legendary foresight in the art of self-preservation.

As soon as I get back from the bathroom after throwing up, I intend to write some letters.

I have this picture in my head of the APA day care facility, filled with unruly boys (and a tomboy or two). What a food fight! I wonder who gets the job of sorting them out into neat categories that ensure the viability of male cross-dressers at our expense.

One thing for sure: a lot of people will get public funding for bunch of academic conferences and forgettable academic papers.

Let's hope that by 2010 they all go away ...

As I see it reparative therapy is almost cousined to the idiotic theory that Money tried to jam down every ones throat...the brain is malleable and gender changeable. How outlandish!

Diane http://harrybenjaminsyndrome.org/

Ok, I agree to your statement. But we can think all this is the Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) if itßs not the Hary Syndrome or GID or the Rubbish sydrome. BIID as Blanchard and Zucker think is absolut the same. So we must pay attention to this future poor men who could lost reputation and money aswell.