Lawrence Hartmann is a child and adult psychiatrist, social-psychiatric activist, clinician, professor, and former President of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Hartmann played a central role in the APA's 1973 decision to remove homosexuality as a diagnosis of mental illness from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. This change decisively changed the modern era of LGBTQ rights by providing support for the overturning of laws and prejudices against homosexuals and by advancing gay civil rights, including the right to immigrate, to adopt, to buy a home, to teach, to marry, and to be left alone.[1][2]
Family and early life
Hartmann grew up in New York City. He was born in Vienna, Austria in 1937 into a prominent family of intellectuals, professors, and social reformers. Hartmann's early years were unsettled by the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany (Anschluss), and his family's consequent emigration from Vienna to Paris in 1938, to Switzerland in 1939, and to New York City in 1941. His father was Heinz Hartmann (1894–1970), an internationally known psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, as well as a student and analysand of Sigmund Freud's.[3]
Education and academic and clinical career
Hartmann was educated at the Fieldston School in New York City and then at Harvard College, where he received a B.A. in History and Literature (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa). As a Rhodes Scholar, Hartmann earned two degrees in English Literature from Oxford University. He received an M.D. from Harvard Medical School and then served as an intern in pediatrics at the University of California in San Francisco. He served his residency in psychiatry (1965–1967) and a fellowship in child psychiatry (1967–1969) at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center (MMHC), a Harvard Teaching Hospital. He was psychoanalyzed from 1966 until 1971. Upon completion of his training, Hartmann began a private practice with adults, adolescents, and children ; ran a child and adolescent psychiatry clinic and a school consultation program; and, for about 50 years, taught, and served as a clinical professor of psychiatry, at Harvard Medical School, mostly at MMHC and later mostly at Cambridge Hospital. He has written on such topics as child psychotherapy, dirty words, ethics, play, apartheid, torture, skepticism, and biopsychosocial integration.[4]
Public career
Hartmann's activism and interest in complex psychiatic issues and biopsychosocial integration led him to be elected a member of the APA Assembly and subsequently Speaker of the Assembly before being elected Area Trustee, Vice President (1990) and then President of the APA (1991–1992).[4]
Personal life
Hartmann has lived with Brian Pfeiffer, an architectural historian, in Cambridge, Massachusetts since 1973. They married in 2004 when Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to grant full civil rights for same-sex marriage.[4]
Hartmann, Lawrence (1973). "Some Uses of Dirty Words by Children". Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry. 12 (1): 108–122. doi:10.1097/00004583-197301000-00008. PMID4683861.
Hartmann, L. & Hanson, G. (1986), Child psychotherapy. In: Current Psychiatric Therapies, ed. J. Masserman. New York: Grune and Stratton, pp. 29–43.
Nightingale, E. O.; Hannibal, K.; Geiger, H. J.; Hartmann, L.; Lawrence, R.; Spurlock, J. (1990). "Apartheid medicine. Health and human rights in South Africa". JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association. 264 (16): 2097–2102. doi:10.1001/jama.264.16.2097. PMID2214078.
Hartmann, L. (1991). "Humane values and biopsychosocial integration". American Journal of Psychiatry. 148 (9): 1130–1134. doi:10.1176/ajp.148.9.1130. PMID1882988.
{Hartmann, L. (1992a), Some social psychiatric problems in Chile, South Africa and the Soviet Union. In: Psychiatry and World Accords, ed. J. Masserman. New York, Gardner, pp. 5–15.
Hartmann, L. (1992). "Reflections on humane values and biopsychosocial integration". American Journal of Psychiatry. 149 (9): 1134–1141. doi:10.1176/ajp.149.9.1134. PMID1503124.
Hanson, G. & Hartmann, L. (1996), Latency development in prehomosexual boys. In: Textbook of Homosexuality and Mental Health, ed. R.P. Cabaj & T.S. Stein. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, pp. 253–266.
Hartmann, L. (1996), Foreword. In: Textbook of Homosexuality and Mental Health, ed. R.P. Cabaj & T.S. Stein. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, pp. xxv–xxxi.
Hartmann, Lawrence (1998). "Children are left out". Amer. J. Forensic Psychiatry. 19 (3): 33–44.
Hartmann, Lawrence (2003). "Too flawed. Don't publish: A commentary on Spitzer and changing sexual orientation". Archives of Sexual Behavior. 32: 436–438.
^Sabshin, M. (1992). "Lawrence Hartmann, M.D., one hundred twentieth president, 1991-1992". American Journal of Psychiatry. 149 (9): 1145–1147. doi:10.1176/ajp.149.9.1145. PMID1503126.
^ abcDrescher, Jack (2006). "An Interview with Lawrence Hartmann, MD". Journal of Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy. 10: 123–137. doi:10.1300/J236v10n01_11. S2CID143330993.
Bayer, R. Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis. New York: Basic Books; New York, NY, USA: 1981.
Drescher, J. and J. P. Merlino, ed. American psychiatry and Homosexuality: An Oral History. Chapter 3: An Interview with Lawrence Hartmann, MD. Routledge: 2007. (Available free online : Google "Researchgate Lawrence Hartmann interview")
Drescher J., Merlino J.P., editors. American Psychiatry and Homosexuality: An Oral History. Routledge; New York, NY, USA: 2007.
Spiegel, Alix. 81 Words: The Story of how the American Psychiatric Association decided in 1973 that homosexuality was no longer a mental illness. This American Life, 204: January 18, 2002. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/204/81-words
