Dr. Richard Charles Friedman

Friedman built his work on scientific study of LGBTQ people, using studies of identical twins to investigate sexual orientation as a biological phenomenon. His conclusion was supported by the American Psychiatric Association, which had stopped referring to homosexuality as a disorder more than a decade before Friedman’s study. But in everyday practice, many psychiatrists still held the Freudian view that homosexuality was a pathology. Friedman’s book changed the world for the LGBTQ community, leading to a sea change in the way psychiatrists worked with their LGBTQ patients.