Maddening Queers: Psychiatric Discourses Around Queer Identities in Twentieth-Century Canada


Aidan Blockley, University of Alberta

Much academic research exists on the historical treatment of 2SLGBTQIA+ people within the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Despite these two countries being marked as the Canadian psychiatric system’s two major influences, there is little historical literature on queer-psychiatric relationships in Canada. This research aims to fill this gap and, further, build on the work of queer and “madness” activists to conceptualize new/old theories of queerness in our current day and age. Using a Foucauldian genealogical approach, this study assesses multiple psy-aligned professional archives; gay and lesbian/ex-mental patient activism archives; and the provincial archives of Alberta, to gain a multiple-level picture of queer-psychiatric discourse in Canada from 1962-1991. This time period marks rapid changes in the psychiatric discourse concerning same-sex attracted and gender-deviant folks in the United Kingdom and the United States, and a rise of critical consciousness against institutional psychiatry among communities marked as “mad” and disabled. In the midst of testimonies written by sex/gender-deviant folks concerning their traumas within mental wards, a theory of “queerness” emerges from the text of British Columbia’s Mental Health Act, which was in use through the 1970s- that those who are/were called "queer" are those who are “improper” in their reactions to their environments and in their relationships to others. These criteria, originally meant for “qualified professionals” to determine whether someone should be involuntarily committed to psychiatric treatment, gives us insight into the nature of queered sexuality and gender. This “improper relating/reacting” principle would sort transgender people into “valid” and “invalid” categories; fuel studies that would render mad/disabled people into sexual and gender deviants; and justify the use of Electro-Convulsive Therapy, psychotropic drug administration, and isolation treatment against a host of communities Canadian society considered deviant and non-normative. This paper is meant to compile psychiatric literature, activists’ first-hand testimonies, and case studies to outline the state of Canadian psychiatry during this critical time period. While it can be considered seminal in the academic literature, it should be noted that the underpinning theory of maddened-queerness is not new: that as queer, mad/mentally ill, and disabled folks, we can trust the wisdom of our body-minds, and that our ways-of-being should be considered sources of empowerment rather than obstacles to living full and happy lives.

This paper will be presented at the following session: