Sexual and Gender Diagnoses of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM)

We were intrigued when Eli Coleman, Editor of the Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality, invited us to prepare an edited volume re-evaluating the sexual and gender disorders of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). The DSM is currently in its fourth edition (APA, 2000) and the APA anticipates publishing a fifth edition, the DSM-V, in the next decade. APA has already begun to organize work groups to articulate contemporary psychiatry’s conceptual frameworks for the next edition (Kupfer, First and Rgier, 2002; Phillips, First and Pincus, 2003). At times like these, when our diagnostic manual is being updated, the consideration of what is and is not a psychiatric disorder provides opportunities for we psychiatrists