"Curing Queers": Mental Nurses and their Patients, 1935–74 by Tommy Dickinson (review)

In "Curing Queers," nurse and historian Tommy Dickinson explicates the changes in mental health nurses' treatment of homosexuals and transvestites between 1935 and 1976 in the United Kingdom. By attempting to understand how the field of nursing approached the care of homosexuals and transvestites during these years, he addresses broader questions about how politics, the media, and the academy influenced the practice of mental health, which, necessarily, affected nurses and patients alike. Dickinson finds that the organization of mental institutions and an intolerance of homosexuality in this period had much to do with the social and cultural upheavals that World War II caused, as well as the general public's desire for a "traditional" social order in the postwar period. These in turn led to the militarization of mental institutions, with strict hierarchies absent in the prewar period.

Because the public saw homosexuality as a threat to traditional social order, the British government classified it as a psychological disorder, thereby creating the need for medical intervention. At the same time that various media representations of homosexuals in the postwar period raised public alarm about "queers," medical professionals were publishing articles about treating homosexuality sympathetically. This conundrum confused nurses about their role in treating queers, and many came to question the ethics of certain treatments. Some nurses, despite their objection to such treatments, carried them out; others directly disobeyed the orders of their superiors because of their moral objection to, for example, aversion therapy.

To explore these issues in greater detail, Dickinson conducted oral histories with nurses and patients, and these interviews are featured in this book, particularly in the sections that address the nurses' struggle with their role in treating patients within this context of contradictory public and medical opinions. One of the main issues with the methodology and implementation of oral histories in "Curing Queers," and LGBTQ studies in general, involves the questions of agency, subjectivity, and identity. Because members of the LGBTQ community usually conduct queer research, historians, especially oral historians, must take care to separate themselves consciously from their work so that it remains objective and their interviews are not misused. Nan Alamilla Boyd ("Who is the Subject?: Queer Theory Meets Oral History," Journal of the History of Sexuality 17, no. 2 [2008]: 177-189) examines these topics. As with many areas of LGBTQ study, there is a dearth of previous research relating to the history of healthcare and the homosexual; Dickinson's work is an example of how oral histories can enhance research and analysis in a developing field.

In "Curing Queers," Dickinson concentrates on the relationship between changing social political climates and care for queer patients. While there has been much scholarship on queer political identity, on the one hand, and the history of nursing on the other, the blending of the two subjects, as in Dickinson's work, has contributed to crucial advancements in recent years. Much work, though, remains to be done: in particular, increasing overall social acceptance of queer identity, notably of gay men and women, makes it easier for individuals to come forward to discuss their experiences. LGBTQ studies vary in the degree of rigor in oral history methodology implementation, including, for example, in the use of pseudonyms for participants. John D'Emilio's Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983) was one of the first works to emerge during the wider acceptance of a more open discussion of homosexuality; D'Emilio used oral histories to address societal issues and sexuality. His work opened the door to using oral history as a tool for LGBTQ studies, but it lacked a developed oral history methodology. Other groundbreaking works, like Elizabeth Kennedy and Madeline Davis's Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community (New York: Routledge, 1993), employed stricter methodology. Dickinson builds on these and similar works.

Dickinson recruited two dozen...