Stephanie Schroeder


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Summary:

Headcase explores themes of mental health, mental illness, and the experience of mental health care services by members of the LGBTQ community. The editors state, “We initially conceptualized Headcase in 2014 as a curated collection of personal pieces including essays, poems, illustrations, and photographs by writers and artists both established and new.” (p. xxviii) They further decided to include a broad array of patient, provider, social, racial, and ethnic perspectives to “present a broader, more in depth, and balanced conversation.” (p. xxviii)  
 
Schroeder and Theophano divide their anthology into five topical sections: (1) conversations about health and illness, (2) stories of survival, (3) encounters of a mad kind, (4) pushing boundaries, and (5) the poetics of mental health and wellness. Among pieces in the first section, Arlene Istar Lev’s “Queer Affirmative Therapy” (p. 12) introduces a concept that appears repeatedly throughout the book. Unlike traditional conversion therapy, which tries to “cure” gay persons, or even the more neutral DSM V approaches, queer affirmative therapy not only accepts LGBTQ identities, but considers them normal healthy variants. Fidelindo Lim’s and Donald Brown’s more personal essay, “Sa Kanyan Saring Mga Salita” (p. 38), explores the gay experience in Filipino culture. Among the sad stories in section two, Chana Williams tells the tale of her mother’s lobotomy as a treatment for depression and lesbian relationships. Lobotomy also appears in “Fix Me Please, I’m Gay” (section three, p. 169), where psychologist Guy Albert discusses the era of conversion therapy.  

In addition to essays, the conversation in Headcase includes poems, artwork (see, for example, Gabrielle Jordan Stein’s “This Work Is About Digested Socks,” p. 156), a suite of black-and-white images), a series of glyphs, and even a graphic story about J.R. Sullivan Voss’ attempts to fit into society as a trans-man, “Sisyphus (Or: Rocks Fall and Everyone Dies.” (p. 88) In the final section, Guy Glass presents an excerpt of his play, “Doctor Anonymous,” about the 1972 American Psychiatric Association meeting in which a closeted gay psychiatrist wearing a mask  asserted the normality of gay identity. (p. 260) To contemporary viewers, the most shocking revelation in the play is the fact that at that time homosexuality was considered a mental disorder and conversion therapy was a standard practice.
 




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