More for the Mind: Home > Defining Normal Home > Defining Normal: Lesson 3
Lesson Three: Change
Approximately two 50 minute lessons
Day One: Perceptions of Homosexuality
Opener: “Homosexuality an ‘illness’ ” (10 minutes)
- Show “Homosexuality an ‘illness’,” a 1969 video discussing homosexuality, mental health, and legislation by the CBC
- Ask students to identify two different points of view presented in the video
Discussion: Perceptions of Homosexuality (10 minutes)
- Refer to the video clip and talk about public policy and private beliefs
- Ask students which they think come first when it comes to change
Activity One: Homosexuals as a Deviant Other (20-30 minutes)
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- Have students look at Activity One located on this page related to homosexuality and the post-war period
Closing: The Deviant Other (10 minutes)
- Discuss the implication of the medical/psychiatric profession’s in creating “homosexual” as a deviant other.
Day Two: Change
Discussion: Review (5-10 minutes)
- Review the lesson from day one
- Compare the post-war era perception of homosexuality to current ones
- Tell students they will be investigating how those perceptions changed
Activity Two: How Things Changed (30-40 minutes)
- Have students look at the Activity Two posted on this page which illustrated that homosexuality was not dangerously or psychologically abnormal
- Ask students to record significant events and the year they occurred
Closing: Change (10-15 minutes)
- Use student information to create a rough timeline of events on the board or overhead
- Discuss the changes that occurred in perception
Reaching All Learners
- Students could work in pairs in the computer lab to help each other with reading, comprehension and to talk about the significance of the material
Resources for ‘The homosexual as a psychiatric danger’ lesson:
Opening
- “Homosexuality an ‘illness’ ” CBC Digital Archives. Video: 1969.
Activity One
- Irving Bieber, et al. Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study. 1962.
- “Queer sex transforms from issue to asset for psychiatric survivors”
- Doctors on homosexuality 1950.
- “A psychiatric ‘problem,’” CBC Digital Archives. Video: 1959.
- “A History of Psychiatric Homophobia” (PDF)
- Ryan Hotckiss. “School of Hard Knocks” (JPG)
- “To put it bluntly…” (JPG)
- “Secret Tests” (PDF)
Activity Two
- Fact Sheets: Lesbians, gay men and bisexuals and mental health
- Kinsey’s Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale
- Evelyn Hooker, “The adjustment of the male overt homosexual.” 1957.
- LGTB Mental Health Syllabus: The History of Psychiatry & Homosexuality
- “Activists on Air: An interview with Bonnie Burstow”