Doctor Anonymous [Explicit - L, LI] -

"I am a homosexual. I am a psychiatrist."—John E. Fryer, M.D. Today this statement wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. But in 1972, when Fryer stepped up to the podium at the American Psychiatric Association, it was so dangerous to his career that he wore a mask and used a microphone to distort his voice. The following year, the APA deleted homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. In this fictionalized account of the events leading up to that historic speech, we visit the vanished world of 1970’s Philadelphia: the early years of gay activism, opera, and the police brutality of Frank Rizzo. Matthew, a young psychiatrist, is accepted for training in an elite program on the condition that he undergoes gay conversion therapy. Years pass; Matthew falls in love with Jake, a young gay activist. But when a patient, Dudek – a self-hating gay man – makes an accusation that threatens his career, Matthew is thrown back into the closet and forced to choose between his psychoanalyst and his lover. Called “powerful” and “spellbinding” by the critics, Doctor Anonymous examines the masks we wear while hiding the truth from ourselves, how we can shed them and come to grips with our identity. Inspired by a watershed moment in LGBT history, and written by a gay psychiatrist/playwright, this is a moving story, told with humor and sensitivitysee less