Richard C. Friedman

Richard C. Friedman (January 20, 1941 – March 31, 2020) was an academic psychiatrist, a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, and a faculty member at Columbia University. He has conducted research in the endocrinology and the psychodynamics of homosexuality, especially within the context of psychoanalysis. Friedman was born in The Bronx, New York.

Research Friedman's early research was on deprivation experienced by physicians in training. He was the first person to demonstrate that sleep deprivation impaired the capacity of medical doctors in hospitals to function adequately. His later psychiatric research looked at sexuality; he was one of the coauthors of Sexuality: New Perspectives (1985), which addressed sex roles and sexual disorders in women.

He then studied the issues surrounding the way homosexuality was handled by conventional psychoanalysis; in his book Male Homosexuality (1988) Friedman was the first to combine recent findings in psychobiology, gender identity, and family studies with psychoanalytic theory. Friedman challenged the way that the Freudian theory of the Oedipus complex was used by psychoanalysts at that time. He noted that erotic desire for the opposite-sexed parent was not universal and that homosexuality was not a symptomatic response to unconscious fears of heterosexuality. Friedman concluded that homosexuality was not pathological, and should not be treated as a condition to be cured. The book had a major impact on the field and led to significant changes in the way psychoanalysts and psychotherapists understand and treat non-heterosexual patients.

He later wrote Sexual Orientation and Psychoanalysis (2002), co-authored with Jennifer I. Downey, which focuses on the role of psychoanalysis in the understanding of sexual orientation in both sexes. This book discusses in particular detail the role played by psychotherapy in ameliorating the long-term effects of anti-homosexual prejudice. More recently, Friedman and Downey were the first to study the relevance of sexual differentiation of behavior to psychoanalytic theory and practice, arguing that the psychoanalytic approach to psychological development and functioning needed widespread revision.

Friedman was a member of the American Psychiatric Association DSM-III advisory committee for psychosexual disorders and a consultant to the DSM-IV advisory board for gender identity disorders. He was on the editorial board of Archives of Sexual Behavior, and was the editor of Psychodynamic Psychiatry, the official journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry. He received the Mary S. Sigourney Award in 2009 from the Sigourney Trust in recognition of distinguished contributions to the field of psychoanalysis.