Before long, from somewhere in my limbic system a semipredictable parade of emotions streams out in costume, each hiding among the throngs of other students to present unique challenges throughout the dream. For the next several hours I plod and scrape my way through some mundane setting that only I can see is a screaming hellscape. My voice comes out wrong. I drop things constantly, my thumbs don’t work right. Every third person I meet is actually three life-lessons in a trenchcoat come to drag me through a sidescrolling haunted house of childhood trauma. I wake up in a sweaty mess of anachronicity and confusion that lays like a thick fog atop the rest of my day.

There’s a curious talking point that won’t seem to die right now that just got a major boost from everyone’s least favorite author. In shorthand, you’ll most likely see the narrative referred to as “medicalized homophobia”, which posits a conspiracy theory that asserts that gender transition of any kind is an elaborate attempt to convert lesbians and gay men to heterosexuality through hormones and surgical intervention. Despite being baseless on its face, it’s an incredibly popular talking point and certain to come up in any discussion where an anti-trans campaigner wishes to dodge the accusation of being anti-LGBTQ.

As much as I like getting in a good dig, it has a much darker side than just vapid articles on “hook-up culture” and whatever some junior Jordan Peterson sees as an immutable psychological difference between men and women. Psychology today is actually host to an extraordinary number of conversion therapists. But before you can understand that, first you need to know a little bit about the conversion therapy ecosystem.

Re-authoring is the process of exploring subjugated storylines buried by the dominant stories given to us by those in our lives with more power. It seeks not to replace or supplant dominant narratives, but rather to explore alternative ways of understanding more congruent to the people we know ourselves to be.

Beginning with Jean-Martin Charcot, modern psychiatry began largely with the study and control of the other. A French neurologist, Charcot routinely saw women of all ages in his clinic for any manner of perceived ills. And ultimately, in part due to his now infamous student Sigmund Freud, It was his focus in this area that gave rise to psychoanalysis.