Classifying Sexuality and Subjectivity in the DSM-5. (360G-Wellcome-100906_Z_13_Z)

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is the standard reference for the classification of mental disorders, and is seen as authoritative by clinicians, academics, drug companies and policy makers alike around the world. As the first major revision since 1994, the publication of the upcoming 5th edition of the DSM in May 2013 will represent a significant social and medical event. Psychiatric discourses have increasingly struggled with their embeddedness in culture since the pa rtial declassification of homosexuality from the DSM in the 1970s. DSM-5 has responded to this predicament through the proliferation of ever more precise labels. Against this backdrop, the fundamental question that our conference aims to explore is: how do changing classifications of sexuality and gender in DSM-5 navigate wider cultural discourses about morality and human nature? Our conference will bring together an interdisciplinary range of scholars: members of the DSM-5s Sexual and Gender Id entity Disorders Work Group, mental health practitioners, activists, sociologists, political scientists, ethicists, historians and philosophers. We aim to generate new conceptual and substantive work on the interaction between psychiatry and culture, pioneering analyses of the sexual classifications produced by DSM-5, which are expected to be used globally for decades to come.