ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 represents the broadening of scope in the book; it focuses less on Psychology as a discipline and more on the activists who are involved in arguing against beliefs in the 1960s about homosexuality being a mental illness. This chapter outlines the important role the Minorities Research Group had on the blurred boundary between activism and research. As a lesbian group they maintained they would regularly take part in research in order to quash the notion in scientific literature that lesbian women were neurotic and pathological. Importantly, it was the Minorities Research Group who volunteered as the lesbian sample for June Hopkins’ research introduced in Chapter 3. Another project they engaged with was conducted by Charlotte Wolff. Following descriptions of the publication Arena Three, and the research projects the Minorities Research Group took part in, Wolff herself is explored. She too was a queer woman working in academia and has published a number of key texts about scientific understandings of sexuality. The blurred boundary between academic and activism is therefore especially explored in relation to lesbian liberation in 1960s Britain.
