ABSTRACT
Dr. Richard Isay is known to many as the first openly gay psychoanalyst in the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA). Among his many important clinical contributions to psychiatry and psychoanalysis is his developmental theory for male homosexuality, a major revision of the classical psychoanalytic theory. He also played a decisive role in making it possible for openly gay men and women to be accepted for analytic training in the institutes of the APsaA. Dr. Isay attended medical school at the University of Rochester and then did his residency in psychiatry at Yale University. Following two years in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps, he completed psychoanalytic training at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis in New Haven and was on the faculty at Yale until 1981. After moving to New York, he joined the faculty of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and also joined the faculty at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, where he has been Clinical Professor of Psychiatry since 1989.
