Source:
Crissthian Manuel Olivera Fuentes
Clinical Psychology has been busy studying regularly phobias, which are defined as a psychological disorder characterized by a marked and persistent fear of an object or situation (1). Vallejo mentions four characteristics that define a particular fear as a phobia, that is disproportionate to the situation that creates, that can not be explained or reasoned, that is outside voluntary control and, eventually, lead to the avoidance of the feared situation (2).
homophobia concept since its inception by George Weinberg in 1973, has been used both from the academic field as the sexual diversity activists. But homophobia is it really a phobia? What are the implications of this assigning meaning?. Like everything that has to do with human beings, the answers are not absolute and depend on several factors, but generally in most cases certainly not homophobia is part of the psychopathology.
Kon explains that "the term homophobia itself is inadequate to the extent which is associated with individual psychopathology, with repressed or latent homosexuality of the individual himself, with neurosis, sexual fears and other things similar-(3). There are cases where homophobia is exactly this fear effect (expressed as a rejection) by the people because of their own desires and fantasies, but hatred and discrimination against gays and lesbians is basically the product of that culture created through a sex-gender system of bipolar character, full of prejudices and stereotypes and that feeds on racism, classism and misogyny. It is then within the socio-psychological.
The problem is when homophobia is defined as disease and other court reporting agencies and the media. In some homophobic hate crimes (Murder) committed in the United States (4), for example, the strategy of the lawyers of the attackers was to excuse the conduct of their clients through the figure of homophobia, that is, having fallen prey to a feeling that they could not control and ended in the homicide of his victim (a gay or lesbian). It was feared that the judge acquitted the murderer or at least attenuate it off.
We then while pathologizing homosexuality has gone from the homophobia, the hegemonic discourse and cultural and institutional practices that express it are punishable by this concept from a clinical focus to homosexual not have this type crime the penalty should be. The risk is that if we consider homophobia as a disease we are endorsing impunity as one of the ways in which society expresses little or no value to the rights of homosexuals, including principal, his own life. ----------------------------------------------
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1 Barlow, DH, Durand, VM (2001). Abnormal Psychology. A comprehensive approach. Mexico: Thomson Learning.
2 Vallejo, L. (1998). Phobias. In: Vallejo Ruiloba, J., dir., Introduction to psychopathology and psychiatry, Barcelona, \u200b\u200bMasson. 3 Kishimoto
Kanna, Andrew (2002). Adjustment Scale Student homophobic behavior (HBSS) from Van de Ven, Bornholt and Bailey in a group of university of Lima, Thesis for the Degree of Bachelor of Psychology, Faculty of Psychology at the Universidad Ricardo Palma, Lima -Peru.
4 The university case of Matthew Shepard 21 years was one of the most famous and even now remembered.
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