Trans is Not the New Gay

How psychoanalytic elitism and the rejection of science are creating a repetition of the past
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January 22, 2026

A new paper by Roberto D’Angelo encourages mental health professionals to not repeat past mistakes. In an article titled Trans is not the new gay: How psychoanalytic elitism and the rejection of science are creating a repetition of the past, published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Roberto D’Angelo, an Australian psychoanalyst and President of SEGM, examines how psychoanalysis once treated homosexuality in ways that were coercive, stigmatizing, and ultimately harmful—what we would now recognise as a form of gay conversion therapy. Drawing on this history, D’Angelo argues that today’s exploratory, open-ended psychodynamic approaches to questions of gender identity are fundamentally different from those past practices. By contrast, he argues that an unquestioning gender-affirmative approach shares significant similarities to gay conversion therapy, for example where therapists may collude with a person’s desire to eradicate shame-filled or hated parts of the self.

D’Angelo demonstrates that some of the psychoanalysts championing unquestioning gender-affirmation exhibit an ongoing rejection of empirical science. Drawing parallels, he notes that this elitist arrogance is precisely what once shaped psychoanalysis’s now discredited approach to homosexuality. For example, D’Angelo highlights how psychoanalysts ignored Evelyn Hooker’s 1950s research, which demonstrated that homosexual individuals had psychological profiles indistinguishable from heterosexuals. He also points out that psychoanalysts violated core psychoanalytic principles by using threats of terminating therapy to coerce patients into abandoning homosexual activities in favor of heterosexual ones. This resistance to empirical correction contributed to the sustained disregard of such findings by psychoanalysts and mainstream psychiatry, resulting in homosexuality remaining classified as a pathology in the DSM until the 1970s.

Finally, he notes that psychoanalysts who challenge the current dominant position on transgender issues often face professional marginalisation and attempts to undermine their credibility, echoing past efforts to silence dissent within the field.

The main ideas of this paper were presented at SEGM’s 2025 Berlin conference; a recording of that presentation is available below. Readers who wish to explore these issues in greater depth are encouraged to consult two earlier, open-access papers also by D’Angelo: