Wellcome uses cookies.

Read our policy
Wellcome Collection homepage
All
Stories
Images
Catalogue
Events
10 results
  • Article
  • Article

Can our sexual desires be transformed?

| Charlie WilliamsSarah MarksDaniel Pick

In the 1950s, many psychiatrists thought that homosexuality could be reformed. One found that it couldn’t – and his discoveries led to a change in the law.

  • Article
  • Article

The indelible harm caused by conversion therapy

| Jules MontagueStephen Nestor Ostrowski

With first-hand evidence from two powerful testimonies, neurologist Jules Montague explores the destructive history of conversion therapy, a punitive treatment designed to ‘cure’ people of homosexuality.

  • Article
  • Article

Getting around the rules of sex education

| Hannah J Elizabeth

What should we and shouldn’t we teach our teens about sex, inside and outside of the classroom?

  • Article
  • Article

The shocking ‘treatment’ to make lesbians straight

| Helen SpandlerSarah CarrJooney WoodwardDolly Sen

Being a lesbian has never been a crime in the UK, but 50 years ago, some psychologists experimented with treatments to try to ‘cure’ women of their orientation. Find out what this involved.

  • Article
  • Article

Photographs as evidence of gender identity and sexuality

| Dr Jana Funke

Intriguing photographs from sexologists’ archives suggest they could have helped people explore their gender identity and sexuality.

  • Article
  • Article

Sex in graphic novels

| Stephen Lowther

Sex and sexuality have long been explored in the history of the graphic novel.

  • Article
  • Article

It’s getting mighty crowded

| Charlotte SleighGergo Varga

Mid-20th-century population-density research on mice produced a whiskered apocalypse, predicted to become the fate of humans too. But perhaps a more compassionate approach could fend this off.

  • Photo story
  • Photo story

Trans masculinity on the record

| E-J ScottThomas S G Farnetti

Curator of the Museum of Transology in Brighton E-J Scott tells the story behind a few of the 250 objects from the collection, and the powerful effect they had on him as he put trans lives on the record.

  • Article
  • Article

Does mass media pave the way to fascism?

| Charlie WilliamsSarah MarksDaniel Pick

In the aftermath of World War II, psychoanalysts found the psychological roots of authoritarianism closer to home than was comfortable.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

The 200-year search for normal people

| Sarah ChaneyMaïa Walcott

Sarah Chaney poses the question we’ve likely all asked at some point in our lives: 'Am I normal?’, and explores whether normality even exists.