Psychoanalysis and banning conversion therapy: a response to Jeremy Clarke on ‘Code Gender’

Psychoanalysis has a conflicted history with regard to its perspective towards sexuality, particularly homosexuality, in the past. This issue is the subject of current debate, with proposals for UK legislation to impose a criminal legal ban on ‘conversion therapy’ for both sexual orientation and gender identity. This paper critiques Clarke’s support for such a ban, which proposes this ban as a necessary development of current psychoanalytic thought and practice. This critique notes the risks of reifying human rights law as a unitary narrative supporting such a ban, requiring strict compliance by the UK; challenges the origins of transgender status as derived from grievance studies, rather than from analytic principles; contests the use of homosexuality as an appropriate ‘skeleton key’ for constructing psychoanalytic responses to gender identity; and opposes the affirmative drive to reverse epistemic injustice towards trans clients, as conflicting with psychoanalysis’ historic imperative to distinguish between fantasy and truth.