BMJ  2004;328:466 (21 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7437.466

Obituary

Judd Marmor

Psychiatrist who changed the view of homosexuality as a mental disorder

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

When Judd Marmor's patients didn't fit the textbook theory that homosexuality was an illness, he thought perhaps the theory was wrong.

In 1973, as a prominent and heterosexual psychiatrist, he became a leader in the struggle that led to the removal of the definition of homosexuality as an illness from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, changing a position it had held for nearly a century. The following year he was elected president of the association, one of many posts he held during a long career.

Dr Marcia Goin, clinical professor of psychiatry at Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California and current president of the American Psychiatric Association, was a student, colleague, and friend of Marmor. She recalls, "What was really, really important with Judd was his openness to new things. Freud was very open; he listened to patients and . . . [Full text of this article]

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