AGLP to Present Annual Symposium

The Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists (AGLP) will present its annual symposium on Saturday, May 1, at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York City. The all-day symposium, titled “Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis: New Directions,” kicks off AGLP’s annual meeting, held concurrently with APA’s annual meeting.

The AGLP symposium is co-sponsored this year by the St. Luke’s-Roosevelt department of psychiatry, Haworth Press, the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy, and the William Alanson White Institute. The aims of the event are to bring together psychoanalytic theorists and clinicians to review the progress of the past 30 years in moving from a pathologizing perspective of homosexuality to a normative one and to outline directions for the future. According to an AGLP spokesperson, much work has been done in the last decade to refine and clarify the theoretical framework around homosexuality as a normative and parallel track of psychosexual development and to use that framework to work with lesbian and gay patients in a sensitive, well-informed way. Many of the day’s speakers have been instrumental in that process.

Panels are divided into three major areas: historical perspectives, theoretical perspectives, and clinical perspectives. Presenters and discussants include Bertram Schaffner, M.D., Kenneth Lewes, Ph.D., Ralph Roughton, M.D., Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Ph.D., Maggie Miller, C.S.W., Diana Miller, M.D., Ubaldo Leli, M.D., Ronnie C. Lesser, Ph.D., David Schwartz, Ph.D., Susan Vaughan, M.D., Rajiv Gulati, M.D., Ann D’Ercole, Ph.D., Deborah Glazer, Ph.D., Jeffrey Guss, M.D., Scott Masters, M.D., and Jack Drescher, M.D.

Registration and other information on the symposium is available from AGLP Director Roy Harker at (215) 222-2800. ▪