Conversion therapy

Conversion therapy, sometimes called reparative therapy or reorientation therapy, may possibly be one type of sexual orientation change effort that attempts to change the sexual orientation of person from homosexual or bisexual to heterosexual, which have been a source of intense political controversy in the United States and numerous other countries. The other interpretation, which is at least equally likely, is that conversion therapy and sexual orientation change efforts are the same thing. The American Psychiatric Association states that political and moral debates over the integration of gays and lesbians into the mainstream of American society have obscured scientific data about changing sexual orientation "by calling into question the motives and even the character of individuals on both sides of the issue." The most high-profile contemporary advocates of conversion therapy tend to be fundamentalist Christian groups and other religious organizations. The main organization advocating secular forms of conversion therapy is the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH).

The American Psychological Association defines conversion therapy as therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation. The American Psychiatric Association states that conversion therapy is a type of psychiatric treatment "based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that a patient should change his/her sexual homosexual orientation." Psychologist Douglas Haldeman writes that conversion therapy comprises efforts by mental health professionals and pastoral care providers to convert lesbians and gay men to heterosexuality, that techniques include psychoanalysis, group therapy, aversive conditioning involving electric shock or nausea-inducing drugs, sex therapy, reparative therapy, and involvement in ex-gay ministries such as Exodus International, and that claims of its effectiveness are unsupported by empirical evidence.

Mainstream American medical and scientific organizations have expressed concern over conversion therapy and consider it potentially harmful. The advancement of conversion therapy may cause social harm by disseminating inaccurate views about sexual orientation. The ethics guidelines of major mental health organizations in the United States vary from cautionary statements about the safety, effectiveness, and dangers of prejudice associated with conversion therapy (American Psychological Association), to recommendations that ethical practitioners refrain from practicing conversion therapy (American Psychiatric Association) or from referring patients to those who do (American Counseling Association).

Terminology

The American Psychological Association in 2008 defined conversion therapy and reparative therapy as “therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation.“ The American Psychiatric Association considers conversion therapy and reparative therapy to be forms of "psychiatric treatment...based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that a patient should change his/her sexual homosexual orientation." There is disagreement over which methods the term reparative therapy applies to and whether it should be used. GLAAD states that the term implies that homosexuality is a disorder and should be avoided, a view also held by some psychologists and sociologists. Jack Drescher writes in Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man that properly speaking reparative therapy applies only to the approach developed by Elizabeth Moberly and Joseph Nicolosi. Robert Spitzer in 2003 used reparative therapy to refer to "...any help from a mental health professional or an ex-gay ministry for the purpose of changing sexual orientation".

The Just the Facts Coalition, consisting of the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association of School Administrators, American Counseling Association, American Federation of Teachers, American Psychological Association, American School Counselor Association, American School Health Association, Interfaith Alliance Foundation, National Association of School Psychologists, National Association of Secondary School Principals, National Association of Social Workers, National Education Association, and the School Social Work Association of America, in 2008 released Just the Facts About Sexual Orientation and Youth. This statement defines sexual orientation conversion therapy as “counseling and psychotherapy to attempt to eliminate individuals‘ sexual desire for members of their own sex”, and also defines sexual orientation conversion therapy and reparative therapy as “counselling and psychotherapy aimed at eliminating or suppressing homosexuality”. It distinguishes sexual orientation conversion therapy from ex-gay ministry and transformational ministry, defining the latter as "religious groups that use religion to attempt to eliminate those [same-sex] desires."

The American Psychological Association in 2009 released Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation, which defines sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) as "methods that aim to change a same-sex sexual orientation (e.g., behavioral techniques, psychoanalytic techniques, medical approaches, religious and spiritual approaches) to heterosexual, regardless of whether mental health professionals or lay individuals (including religious professionals, religious leaders, social groups, and other lay networks, such as self-help groups) are involved."

History

Overview

Legal scholar Kenji Yoshino argues that the history of conversion therapy can be divided broadly into three phases: an early Freudian period, a period of mainstream approval of conversion therapy during a time when the mental health establishment became the "primary superintendent" of sexuality, and a post-Stonewall period wherein the mainstream medical profession disavowed conversion therapy.

During the earliest parts of psychoanalytic history, analysts granted that homosexuality was non-pathological in certain cases, and the ethical question of whether it ought to be changed was discussed. By the 1920s psychoanalysts assumed that homosexuality was pathological and that attempts to treat it were appropriate, although psychoanalytic opinion about changing homosexuality was largely pessimistic. Those forms of homosexuality that were considered perversions were usually held to be uncurable. Psychoanalysts‘ tolerant statements about homosexuality arose from recognition of the difficulty of achieving change. Beginning in the 1930s and continuing for roughly twenty years, major changes occurred in how psychoanalysts viewed homosexuality, which involved a shift in the rhetoric of psychoanalysts, some of whom felt free to ridicule and abuse their gay patients.

Europe

Sigmund Freud

Main article: Sigmund Freud's views about homosexuality

Freud (1856–1939) was skeptical of the possibility of therapeutic conversion.

Sigmund Freud was a physician and the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud stated that homosexuality could sometimes be removed through hypnotic suggestion, and was influenced by Eugen Steinach, a Viennese endocrinologist who transplanted testicles from straight men into gay men in attempts to change their sexual orientation, stating that his research had “thrown a strong light on the organic determinants of homo-eroticism”. Freud cautioned that Steinach's operations would not necessarily make possible a therapy that could be generally applied, arguing that such transplant procedures would be effective in changing homosexuality in men only in cases in which it was strongly associated with physical characteristics typical of women, and that probably no similar therapy could be applied to lesbianism. In fact Steinach’s method was doomed to failure because the immune system rejects transplanted glands, and was eventually exposed as ineffective and often harmful.

Freud‘s main discussion of female homosexuality was the 1920 paper “The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman“, which described his analysis of a young woman who had entered therapy because her parents were concerned that she was a lesbian. Her father wanted this condition changed. In Freud‘s view, the prognosis was unfavourable because of the circumstances under which she entered therapy, and because homosexuality was not an illness or neurotic conflict. Freud wrote that changing homosexuality was difficult and possible only under unusually favourable conditions, observing that “in general to undertake to convert a fully developed homosexual into a heterosexual does not offer much more prospect of success than the reverse.” Success meant making heterosexual feeling possible, not eliminating homosexual feelings.

Gay people could seldom be convinced that heterosexual sex would provide them with the same pleasure they derived from homosexual sex. Patients often wanted to become heterosexual for reasons Freud considered superficial, including fear of social disapproval, an insufficient motive for change. Some might have no real desire to become heterosexual, seeking treatment only to convince themselves that they had done everything possible to change, leaving them free to return to homosexuality after the failure they expected. Freud therefore told the parents only that he was prepared to study their daughter to determine what effects therapy might have. He eventually broke off the treatment entirely because of what he saw as her hostility to men.

In 1935, Freud wrote a mother who had asked him to treat her son a letter that later became famous:

I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual...By asking me if I can help [your son], you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way we cannot promise to achieve it. In a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies, which are present in every homosexual; in the majority of cases it is no more possible. It is a question of the quality and the age of the individual. The result of treatment cannot be predicted.

Isidor Sadger

Isidor Sadger published “Fragment der Psychoanalyse eines Homosexuellen” in the Jahrbuch fuer sexuellen Zwischenstufen in 1908. It described his analysis of a melancholy Danish count who was homosexual. The analysis lasted for only thirteen days before being terminated by the patient, whose sexual orientation was not changed. Later in 1908, Sadger published “Ist der Kontraere sexual Empfindung heilbar?”, which assessed the value of psychoanalysis as a treatment for “contrary sexual feeling“, in the Zeitschrift fuer Sexualwissenschaft. He answered the question of whether it could be cured in patients who were moral and determined “mit einem runden Ja!“ (“with a round Yes!“). Sadger believed that it was not enough to establish a spurious kind of heterosexual functioning or “masturbatio per vaginam”, wanting instead to change a patient’s “Sexualideal”, the internal image of his sexual object.“

Sadger supported his claim that homosexuality could be cured entirely by describing a four month analysis of a patient whose crucial memories “had been wholly unconscious and first had to be unearthed very laboriously through a month-long analysis.“ Making striking claims about homosexuality on the basis of brief analyses appears to have been typical for psychoanalysts in the early 20th century. The material Sadger’s patients produced appears to have been influenced by his expectations. Sadger permitted his patients to engage in homosexual activity during treatment because of his belief that "behind it, a heterosexual can again be found."

Magnus Hirschfeld, a physician and the leader of the gay rights movement in Germany in the early 20th century, argued that the purpose of therapy should be to permit clients to accept their homosexuality, but accepted that gay men had the right to attempt to change their sexual orientation if they wished and therefore sometimes recommended them to Sadger. Hirschfeld believed that the failure of attempts to change homosexuality through psychoanalysis proved that it was biologically innate.

Felix Boehm

German psychoanalysts who wrote about homosexuality included Felix Boehm. He accepted Freud’s earlier theory of homosexuality involving boys’ identification with their mothers and consequent narcissistic object choice. His major work was a four-part series on homosexuality published in the Internationale Zeitschrift fuer Psychoanalyse between 1920 and 1933. It attempted to present and illustrate the most up to date psychoanalytic thinking on homosexuality. In Boehm’s view, curing homosexuality meant making enjoyable heterosexual functioning possible rather than eliminating homosexual behavior. Boehm claimed to have cured gay people in the fourth part of his series on homosexuality, but presented as proof a case in which “the homosexuality never became conscious for the patient and had never expressed itself in manifest activity.” This patient does not appear to have been homosexual. Boehm claimed that manifest homosexuals regularly abandoned treatment out of hatred for their analysts just at the point when they were close to achieving heterosexual functioning. Boehm criticised Sadger’s Die Lehre von den Geschlechtsverwirrugen ... auf psychoanalytischer Grundlage for its brief analyses, many of which lasted only weeks or months.

Sandor Ferenczi

Sandor Ferenczi was an influential psychoanalyst. Native to Hungary, he wrote many of his works in German.

Ferenczi denied the importance of inherited factors on homosexuality, claiming that it was caused by “excessively powerful heterosexuality (intolerable to the ego)“. Ferenczi tried to distinguish between several different types of homosexuality, basing his distinctions on an unspecified number of patients whose analyses had sometimes lasted for a short period and sometimes “a whole year and even longer.” Ferenczi hoped to cure some kinds of homosexuality completely, but was content in practice with reducing what he considered gay men‘s hostility to women, along with the urgency of their homosexual desires, and with helping them to become attracted to and potent with women. In his view, a gay man who was confused about his sexual identity and felt himself to be “a woman with the wish to be loved by a man” was not a promising candidate for cure. Ferenczi believed that complete cures of homosexuality might become possible in the future when psychoanalytic technique had been improved. Sandor Rado and Melanie Klein were pupils of Ferenczi.

Anna Freud

Daughter of Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud became an influential psychoanalytic theorist in the UK after she left Austria in 1938 to escape the Nazis.

Anna Freud reported the successful treatment of homosexuals as neurotics in a series of unpublished lectures. In 1949 she published “Some Clinical Remarks Concerning the Treatment of Cases of Male Homosexuality” in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. In her view, it was important to pay attention to the interaction of passive and active homosexual fantasies and strivings, the original interplay of which prevented adequate identification with the father. The patient should be told that his choice of a passive partner allows him to enjoy a passive or receptive mode, while his choice of an active partner allows him to recapture his lost masculinity. She claimed that these interpretations would reactive repressed castration anxieties, and childhood narcissistic grandiosity and its complementary fear of dissolving into nothing during heterosexual intercourse would come with the renewal of heterosexual potency.

Anna Freud in 1951 published “Clinical Observations on the Treatment of Male Homosexuality” in Psychoanalytic Quarterly and “Homosexuality” in the American Psychoanalytic Association Bulletin. These articles insisted on the attainment of full object-love of the opposite sex as a requirement for cure of homosexuality. In 1951 she gave a lecture about treatment of homosexuality which was criticised by Edmund Bergler, who emphasised the oral fears of patients and minimized the importance of the phallic castration fears she had discussed.

Anna Freud recommended in 1956 to a journalist who was preparing an article about psychoanalysis for the London Observer that she not quote Freud‘s letter to the American mother, on the grounds that “...nowadays we can cure many more homosexuals than was thought possible in the beginning. The other reason is that readers may take this as a confirmation that all analysis can do is to convice patients that their defects or ‘immoralities‘ do not matter and that they should be happy with them. That would be unfortunate.”

Melanie Klein

The Austrian-born psychoanalyst Melanie Klein moved to London in 1926. Her seminal book The Psycho-Analysis of Children, based on lectures given to the British Psychoanalytic Society in the 1920s, was published in 1932. Klein claimed that entry into the Oedipus Complex is based on mastery of primitive anxiety from the oral and anal stages. If these tasks are not performed properly, developments in the Oedipal stage will be unstable. Complete analysis of patients with such unstable developments would require uncovering these early concerns. The analysis of homosexuality required dealing with paranoid trends based on the oral stage. The Psycho-Analysis of Children ends with the analysis of Mr. B., a gay man. Klein claimed that he illustrated pathologies that enter into all forms of homosexuality: a gay man idealizes “the good penis” of his partner to ally the fear of attack he feels due to having projected his paranoid hatred onto the imagined “bad penis“ of his mother as an infant. She stated that Mr. B.’s homosexual behaviour diminished after he overcame his need to adore the “good penis” of an idealized man. This was made possible by his recovering his belief in the good mother and his ability to sexually gratify her with his good penis and plentiful semen.

Edmund Bergler

Edmund Bergler’s first contribution to the psychoanalytic theory of homosexuality was “Der Mammakomplex des Mannes“, an article co-authored with L. Eidelberg and published in the Internationale Zeitschrift fuer Psychoanalyse in 1933. It described a “breast complex“ found in both normal and pathological conditions, among which Eidelberg and Bergler included “a type of homosexuality.” The male child reacts violently to weaning, making unsuccessful attempts to inhibit his frustrated aggression that only heighten it. This causes ambivalent identifications, object choices, and narcissistic compensations. Cathexes are displaced from the breast onto the penis, and the infant substitutes urine for milk, attempting to make active what was once passive. He unsuccessfully tries to transfer hatred of the mother onto the father, but the Oedipus complex does not reach normal intensity because of the unresolved ambivalence of the oral period. The unstable organization achieve at the Oedipal period regresses to an earlier stage involving fixation on the oral mother, whose vagina is conflated with the infant‘s own cannibalistic mouth, transmuting it into the vagina dentata. This oral fixation lead to character traits such as spite and libido charged with aggression.

J. Vinchon and Sacha Nacht

J. Vinchon and Sacha Nacht in 1929 published "Considerations sur la cure psychoanalytique d’une nevrose homosexuelle" in Revue francaise de psychoanalyse. This article divided gay people into three categories: those with glandular abnormalities, sexual perverts, and neurotics. Vinchon and Nacht believed that gay people in the second category (who were "comfortably settled in [their] vice") were incurable.

Daniel Lagache

Daniel Lagache in 1950 published “Homosexuality and Jealousy” in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. It described the analysis of a gay man, illustrating the relation of active and passive forms of homosexuality and the defensive maneuvers that mediate between them. The patient shifted from homosexual to heterosexual interests, and experienced a stage of intense jealousy that Lagache regarded as both a sign of progress and a resistance. The heterosexual interest was a new defense against passive homosexuality, while active homosexuality had been his old defense. Passive homosexuality was intolerable to the patient because it was associated with castration, but it was deeply rooted in his psychology because “submission and obedience to the father [had] as their aim the right to take his place.”

United States

Charles W. Socarides, M.D.

20th century

Psychoanalysis started to receive recognition in the United States in 1909, when Sigmund Freud delivered a series of lectures at Clark University in Massachusetts at the invitation of G. Stanley Hall.

Abraham Brill in 1913 wrote “The Conception of Homosexuality”, which he published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and read before the American Medical Association’s annual meeting, where it was criticised by several doctors. Brill declared that after long study he had slowly overcome his disgust for homosexuality. He denied that homosexuality was influenced by inherited factors or necessarily related to emotional disturbance. Brill observed that it was impossibile to use the term homosexuality diagnostically, since it could refer to several different entities. Brill asserted that the development of sexual attraction to the same sex was always related to narcissism, which he incorrectly defined as love for one‘s self. Brill criticised physical treatments for homosexuality such as bladder washing, rectal massage, and castration, along with hypnosis, but referred approvingly to Freud and Sadger's use of psychoanalysis, calling its results “very gratifying.“ Since Brill understood cure of homosexuality to mean restoring heterosexual potency, he claimed that he had cured his patients in several cases, even though many remained homosexual.

Dr. Wilhelm Stekel, an Austrian, published his views on treatment of homosexuality, which he considered a disease, in the American Psychoanalytic Review in 1930. Stekel believed that “success was fairly certain“ in changing homosexuality through psychoanalysis provided that it was performed correctly and the patient wanted to be treated. In 1932, the Psychoanalytic Quarterly published a translation of Dr. Helene Deutsch's paper “On Female Homosexuality“. Deutsch reported her analysis of a lesbian, who did not become heterosexual as a result of treatment, but who managed to achieve a "positive libidinal relationship" with another woman. Deutsch indicated that she would have considered heterosexuality a better outcome.

Dr. La Forest Potter of New York City published Strange Loves: A Study in Sexual Abnormalities, which focused on homosexuality, in 1933, probably to exploit the interest in the subject generated by the American publication of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness and Blair Niles’s Strange Brother. He believed that homosexuality was caused by psychological and hormonal disturbances, and that it could be cured if the patient wanted to change. Potter advocated a mixture of psychoanalysis and hormone treatment. He believed that marriage might help to alter lesbianism in cases in which it was not hereditary. Potter described his treatment of two lesbians, stating that it was unsuccessful in one case but successful in the other. He stated that he had successfully cured a young man of homosexuality.

Edmund Bergler moved to the USA after vacating his post as psychoanalyst in Vienna in 1937. He published “Preliminary Phases of the Masculine Beating Fantasy“, a response to Freud‘s “A Child Is Being Beaten“, in Psychoanalytic Quarterly in 1938. Bergler claimed to have detected the early phase of a beating fantasy in boys. This phase began with the weaning shock, which mobilizes enormous sadistic rage against the breasts of the depriving phallic mother, which is an attempt at narcissistic restitution for the lost breasts of the mother. Due to guilt, this rage is transmuted into a masochistic fantasy of being beaten by the father, substituting the boy’s own buttocks for the mother’s breasts and idealizing the father out of hatred of the mother, thereby substituting a homosexual for a heterosexual bond. The paper shifted the important stage in the development of homosexual perversion back from the Oedipus complex to the oral stage, minimized the importance of object libido and emphasised more primitive narcissistic oral rage, and established that homosexual perversion could not be based on a primary homosexual attachment to the father, since there was always an earlier heterosexual attachment to the mother. The implication was that all outcomes of the Oedipus complex involving a passive homosexual stance toward the father are perverse.

During the three decades between Freud's death in 1939 and the Stonewall riots in 1969, conversion therapy received approval from most of the psychiatric establishment in the United States. Sandor Rado in 1940 criticized Freud's theory of innate bisexuality in his article "A Critical Examination of the Concept of Bisexuality". Rado concluded that pursuing the genital organs of the opposite sex is the standard form of achieving genital stimulation and that the main cause of homosexuality is anxiety, although he granted that "constitutional factors may have an influence on morbid sex developments." Rado‘s article appears to have been partly motivated by the desire to combat homosexuality.

Bergler was the most important psychoanalytic theorist of homosexuality in the 1950s. He was vociferous in his opposition to Alfred Kinsey, who argued that homosexuality was normal human variation. Bergler argued that Kinsey's statistical research overestimated the incidence of homosexuality because it was conducted in cities where perversion thrived. Bergler based his theories partly on analysis of the novels of literary figures known to be gay. Kinsey's work, and its reception, led Bergler to develop his own theories for treatment, which were essentially to 'blame the victim'.

Bergler claimed that if gay people wanted to change, and the right therapeutic approach was taken, then they could be cured in 90% of cases. Bergler used confrontational therapy in which gay people were punished in order to make them aware of their masochism. Bergler openly violated professional ethics to achieve this, breaking patient confidentiality in discussing the cases of patients with other patients, bullying them, calling them liars and telling them they were worthless. He insisted that gay people could be cured, and that if they believed they should be accepted, they were asking for punishment, which confirmed their pathological immaturity. Bergler initially blamed those who mistreated gay people, because it provided a rationale for the masochistic view of the world; but, from the 1950s, and following the emergence of gay rights organisations, he began to blame homosexuals for their own oppression. Bergler confronted Kinsey because Kinsey thwarted the possibility of cure by presenting homosexuality as an acceptable way of life, which was the basis of the homosexual rights activism of the time. Bergler popularised his views on homosexuality and its cure in the USA in the 1950s using magazine articles and books aimed at non-specialists.

In 1951, the mother who wrote to Freud asking him to treat her son sent Freud's response to the American Journal of Psychiatry, in which it was published. The 1952 first edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I) classified homosexuality as a mental disorder.

The homosexuality as sickness theory started to come under criticism in the 1950s. Evelyn Hooker in 1957 pulished “The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual”, which found that "homosexuals were not inherently abnormal and that there was no difference between homosexual and heterosexual men in terms of pathology." This paper subsequently became influential. Irving Bieber and his colleagues in 1962 published Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals, which concluded that "although this change may be more easily accomplished by some than by others, in our judgment a heterosexual shift is a possibility for all homosexuals who are strongly motivated to change." The same year, Albert Ellis published Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy, which claimed that "fixed homosexuals in our society are almost invariably neurotic or psychotic:... therefore, no so-called normal group of homosexuals is to be found anywhere." Ellis published his main work on homosexuality, Homosexuality: Its Causes and Cure, in 1965.

Charles Socarides’s first book, The Overt Homosexual, was published in 1968. Socarides regarded homosexuality as an illness arising from a conflict between the id and the ego usually arising from an early age in "a female-dominated environment wherein the father was absent, weak, detached or sadistic". He credited the earlier work of Irving Bieber with clarifying progress in therapeutic knowledge and effectivenes.

The Stonewall Inn

There was a riot in 1969 at the Stonewall Bar in New York after a police raid. The Stonewall riot acquired symbolic significance for the gay rights movement and came to be seen as the opening of a new phase in the struggle for gay liberation. Following these events, conversion therapy came under increasing attack. Activism against conversion therapy increasingly focused on the DSM's designation of homosexuality as a psychopathology.

Lawrence Hatterer in 1970 published Changing Homosexuality in the Male, which advocated a therapy based on simplified psychoanalytic ideas and behavior modification techniques.

In 1973, after years of criticism from gay activists and bitter dispute among psychiatrists, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality as a mental disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Supporters of the change used evidence from researchers such as Alfred Kinsey and Evelyn Hooker. Psychiatrst Robert Spitzer, a member of the APA's Committee on Nomenclature, played an important role in the events that lead to this decision. Critics argued that it was a result of pressure from gay activists, and demanded a referendum among voting members of the Association. The referendum was held in 1974 and the APA’s decision was upheld by a 58% majority.

Books promoting new forms of conversion therapy were published in the 1980s. Robert Kronemeyer in 1980 published Overcoming Homosexuality, while research psychologist Elizabeth Moberly in 1983 published Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic.

The APA removed ego-dystonic homosexuality from the DSM-IV in 1987 and opposes the diagnosis of either homosexuality or ego-dystonic homosexuality as any type of disorder.

Joseph Nicolosi began playing an important role in the development of conversion therapy in the early 1990s, publishing his first book Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality in 1991. In 1992, Joseph Nicolosi, Charles Socarides, and Benjamin Kaufman founded the National Association for Research & Treatment of Homosexuality (NARTH), a mental health organization that opposes the mainstream medical view of homosexuality and aims to "make effective psychological therapy available to all homosexual men and women who seek change."

21st century

United States Surgeon General David Satcher in 2001 issued a report stating that "there is no valid scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed". The same year, Robert Spitzer's study on sexual orientation change caused controversy and attracted media attention.

The American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) spoke against NARTH in 2004, stating "that organization does not adhere to our policy of nondiscrimination and ... their activities are demeaning to our members who are gay and lesbian." In 2006, Focus on the Family and several other organizations announced that they would protest the American Psychological Association's convention in New Orleans. Mike Haley, the director of gender issues for Focus on the Family, commented that, "The APA's views on issues such as the immutability of homosexuality have caused real harm to real people and patients." The same year, a survey of members of the American Psychological Association rated reparative therapy as "certainly discredited", though the authors warn that the results should be interpreted carefully as an initial step, not a final word.

The American Psychological Association in 2007 convened a task force to evaluate its policies regarding reparative therapy; ex-gay organizations expressed concerns about the lack of representation of pro-reparative-therapy perspectives on the task force, while alleging that anti-reparative-therapy perspectives were amply represented.

In 2008, the organizers of an APA panel on the relationship between religion and homosexuality canceled the event after gay activists objected that "conversion therapists and their supporters on the religious right use these appearances as a public relations event to try and legitimize what they do."

In 2009, American Psychological Association stated that it "encourages mental health professionals to avoid misrepresenting the efficacy of sexual orientation change efforts by promoting or promising change in sexual orientation when providing assistance to individuals distressed by their own or others’ sexual orientation and concludes that the benefits reported by participants in sexual orientation change efforts can be gained through approaches that do not attempt to change sexual orientation".

Theories and techniques

Behavioral modification

Main article: Behavior modification

Douglas Haldeman writes in "Sexual Orientation Conversion Therapy for Gay Men and Lesbians: A Scientific Examination" that early behavioral forms of conversion therapy mainly employed aversive conditioning techniques, involving electric shock and nausea-inducing drugs during presentation of same-sex erotic images. Cessation of the aversive stimuli was typically accompanied by the presentation of opposite-sex erotic images, with the objective of strengthening heterosexual feelings. Haldeman discusses the work of M. P. Feldman, who in "Aversion therapy for sexual deviation: a critical review", published in 1966, claimed a 58% cure rate. Haldeman is skeptical that such stressful methods permit feelings of sexual responsiveness, and notes that Feldman defined success as suppression of homosexuality and increased capacity for heterosexual behavior.

Haldeman also discusses the covert sensitization method, which involves instructing patients to imagine vomiting or receiving electric shocks, writing that only single case studies have been conducted, and that their results cannot be generalized. He writes that behavioral conditioning studies tend to decrease homosexual feelings, but do not increase heterosexual feelings, citing Rangaswami's "Difficulties in arousing and increasing heterosexual responsiveness in a homosexual: A case report", published in 1982, as typical in this respect.

Haldeman concludes that such methods applied to anyone except gay people would be called torture, writing, "Individuals undergoing such treatments do not emerge heterosexually inclined; rather they become shamed, conflicted, and fearful about their homosexual feelings."

Haldeman writes in "Gay Rights, Patient Rights: The Implications of Sexual Orientation Conversion Therapy" that aversive treatments sometimes involved the application of electric shock to the hands and/or genitals, or nausea-inducing drugs, administered simultaneously with the presentation of homoerotic stimuli, while less cruel methods included masturbatory reconditioning, visualization, and social skills training. All of these methods were based on the idea that homosexuality is a learned behavior that can be reconditioned.

Ex-gay ministry

Main article: Ex-gay

Some sources describe ex-gay ministries as a form of conversion therapy, while others state that ex-gay organizations and conversion therapy are distinct methods of attempting to convert gay people to heterosexuality. Ex-gay ministries have also been called transformational ministries. One ex-gay leader was Colin Cook, who is noted for his funky masturbation habits and rather weird therapy.

Ex-gay groups state that they do not conduct clinical treatment of any kind. Exodus International believe reparative therapy can be a beneficial tool. Evergreen International states that it is unlikely therapy can erase all homosexual feelings, and does not advocate any particular form of therapy.

Group therapy

Main article: Group psychotherapy

Douglas Haldeman writes that group therapies intended to change homosexuality have produced contradictory results similar to those of psychoanalytic treatment.

Hadden's "Treatment of male homosexuals in groups", published in 1966, reported a 37% shift to heterosexuality in its 32 subjects. However, in Haldeman's view, its results must be viewed with skepticism because its outcome measures depended upon self-reports, and people involved in group treatment are especially susceptible to influences that might distort their reporting. Mintz's "Overt male homosexuals in combined group and individual treatment", was published in 1966, and which had had ten subjects, reported that homosexual patients were able to increase contact with heterosexuals, a claim Haldeman describes as "impressionistic." Birk's "The myth of classical homosexuality: Views of a behavioral psychotherapist, which was published in Judd Marmor's 1980 book Homosexual behavior: A modern reappraisal, describes a combination of insight-oriented and social learning methods of treating homosexuality, claiming that 38% of his patients achieved solid heterosexual shifts. Haldeman writes that Birk's treatment objectives are unclear, and concludes that the problems with group therapy indicate that conversion therapy does not change sexual orientation but only instructs or coerces heterosexual behavior in a minority of subjects.

Psychoanalysis

Main article: Psychoanalysis

Douglas Haldeman writes that psychoanalytic treatment of homosexuality is exemplified by the work of Irving Bieber and his colleagues in Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals. They advocated long-term therapy aimed at resolving the unconscious childhood conflicts that they considered responsible for homosexuality. Haldeman notes that Bieber's methodology has been criticized because it relied upon a clinical sample, the description of the outcomes was based upon subjective therapist impression, and follow-up date were poorly presented. Bieber reported a 27% success rate from long-term therapy, but only 18% of the patients in whom Bieber considered the treatment successful had been exclusively homosexual to begin with, while 50% had been bisexual. In Haldeman's view, this makes even Bieber's unimpressive claims of success misleading.

Haldeman discusses other psychoanalytic studies of attempts to change homosexuality. Curran and Parr's "Homosexuality: An analysis of 100 male cases", published in 1957, reported no significant increase in heterosexual behavior. Mayerson and Lief's "Psychotherapy of homosexuals: A follow-up study of nineteen cases", published in 1965, reported that half of its 19 subjects were exclusively heterosexual in behavior four and a half years after treatment, but its outcomes were based on patient self-report and had no external validation. In Haldeman's view, those participants in the study who reported change were bisexual at the outset, and its authors wrongly interpreted capacity for heterosexual sex as change of sexual orientation.

Reparative therapy

Reparative therapy has been used as a synonym for conversion therapy generally, but Jack Drescher has argued that strictly speaking it refers to a specific kind of therapy associated with Elizabeth Moberly and Joseph Nicolosi. Joseph Nicolosi's Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality, published in 1991, introduced reparative therapy as a term for psychotherapeutic attempts to convert gay people to heterosexuality.

Douglas C. Haldeman writes that Nicolosi promotes psychoanalytic theories suggesting that homosexuality is a form of arrested psychosexual development, resulting from "an incomplete bond and resultant identification with the same-sex parent, which is then symbolically repaired in psychotherapy". Nicolosi’s intervention plans involve conditioning a man to a traditional masculine gender role. He should "(1) participate in sports activities, (2) avoid activities considered of interest to homosexuals, such [as] art museums, opera, symphonies, (3) avoid women unless it is for romantic contact, (4) increase time spent with heterosexual men in order to learn to mimic heterosexual male ways of walking, talking, and interacting with other heterosexual men, (5) Attend church and join a men’s church group, (6) attend reparative therapy group to discuss progress, or slips back into homosexuality, (7) become more assertive with women through flirting and dating, (8) begin heterosexual dating, (9) engage in heterosexual intercourse, (10) enter into heterosexual marriage, and (11) father children".

Most mental health professionals consider reparative therapy discredited, but it is still practiced by some professionals. Psychoanalysts critical of Nicolosi's theories have offered gay-affirmative approaches as an alternative to reparative therapy. Exodus International regards reparative therapy as a useful tool to eliminate "unwanted same-sex attraction."

Sex therapy

Main article: Masters and Johnson

Douglas Haldeman has described William Masters' and Virginia Johnson's work on sexual orientation change as a form of conversion therapy.

In Homosexuality in Perspective, published in 1979, Masters and Johnson viewed homosexuality as the result of blocks that prevented the learning that facilitated heterosexual responsiveness, and described a study of 54 gay men who were dissatisfied with their sexual orientation. The original study did not describe the treatment methodology used, but this was published five years later. John C. Gonsiorek criticized their study on several grounds in 1981, pointing out that while Masters and Johnson stated that their patients were screened for major psychopathology or severe neurosis, they did not explain how this screening was performed, or how the motivation of the patients to change was assessed. 19 of their subjects were described as uncooperative during therapy and refused to participate in a follow-up assessment, but all of them were assumed without justification to have successfully changed.

Douglas Haldeman writes that Masters and Johnson's study was founded upon heterosexist bias, and that it would be tremendously difficult to replicate. In his view, the distinction Masters and Johnson made between "conversion" (helping gay men with no previous heterosexual experience to learn heterosexual sex) and "reversion" (directing men with some previous heterosexual experience back to heterosexuality) was not well founded. Many of the subjects Masters and Johnson labelled homosexual may not have been homosexual, since, of their participants, only 17% identified themselves as exclusively homosexual, while 83% were in the predominantly heterosexual to bisexual range. Haldeman observed that since 30% of the sample was lost to the follow up, it is possible that the outcome sample did not include any people attracted mainly or exclusively to the same sex. Haldeman concludes that it is likely that, rather than converting or reverting gay people to heterosexuality, Masters and Johnson only strengthened hetersexual responsiveness in people who were already bisexual.

Studies of conversion therapy

"Among those studies reporting on the perceptions of harm, the reported negative social and emotional consequences include self-reports of anger, anxiety, confusion, depression, grief, guilt, hopelessness, deteriorated relationships with family, loss of social support, loss of faith, poor self-image, social isolation, intimacy difficulties, intrusive imagery, suicidal ideation, self-hatred, and sexual dysfunction. These reports of perceptions of harm are countered by accounts of perceptions of relief, happiness, improved relationships with God, and perceived improvement in mental health status, among other reported benefits"."

Can Some Gay Men and Lesbians Change Their Sexual Orientation?

In May 2001, Dr. Robert Spitzer presented "Can Some Gay Men and Lesbians Change Their Sexual Orientation? 200 Participants Reporting a Change from Homosexual to Heterosexual Orientation", a study of attempts to change homosexual orientation through ex-gay ministries and conversion therapy, at the American Psychiatric Association's convention in New Orleans. The study was partly a response to the APA's 2000 statement cautioning against clinical attempts at changing homosexuality, and was aimed at determining whether such attempts were ever successful rather than how likely it was that change would occur for any given individual. Spitzer wrote that some earlier studies provided evidence for the effectiveness of therapy in changing sexual orientation, but that all of them suffered from methodological problems.

He reported that after intervention, 66% of the men and 44% of the women had achieved "Good Heterosexual Functioning", which he defined as requiring five criteria (being in a loving heterosexual relationship during the last year, overall satisfacition in emotional relationship with a partner, having heterosexual sex with the partner at least a few times a month, achieving physical satisfaction through heterosexual sex, and not thinking about having homosexual sex more than 15% of the time while having heterosexual sex). He found that the most common reasons for seeking change were lack of emotional satisfaction from gay life, conflict between same-sex feelings and behavior and religious beliefs, and desire to marry or remain married. This paper was widely reported in the international media and taken up by politicians in the United States, Germany, and Finland, and by conversion therapists.

In 2003, Spitzer published the paper in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Spitzer's study has been criticized on numerous ethical and methodological grounds. Gay activists argued that the study would be used by conservatives to undermine gay rights. Researchers observed that the study sample consisted of people who sought treatment primarily because of their religious beliefs, and who may therefore have been motivated to claim that they had changed even if they had not, or to overstate the extent to which they might have changed. That participants had to rely upon their memories of what their feelings were before treatment may have distorted the findings. It was impossible to determine whether any change that occurred was due to the treatment because it was not clear what it involved and there was no control group. Claims of change may have reflected a change in self-labelling rather than of underlying orientation or attractions, and particpants may have been bisexual before treatment. Follow-up studies were not conducted. Spitzer stressed the limitations of his study. Spitzer said that the number of gay people who could successfully become heterosexual was likely to be "pretty low", and conceded that his subjects were "unusually religious."

Changing Sexual Orientation

Ariel Shidlo and Michael Schroeder found in "Changing Sexual Orientation: A Consumer's Report", a peer-reviewed study published in 2002, that 88% of participants failed to achieve a sustained change in their sexual behavior and 3% reported changing their orientation to heterosexual. The remainder reported either losing all sexual drive or attempting to remain celibate, with no change in attraction. Some of the participants who failed felt a sense of shame and had gone through conversion therapy programs for many years. Others who failed believed that therapy was worthwhile and valuable. Shidlo and Schroeder also reported that many respondents were harmed by the attempt to change. Of the 8 respondents (out of a sample of 202) who reported a change in sexual orientation, 7 worked as ex-gay counselors or group leaders.

Ethical Issues in Attempts to Ban Reorientation Therapies

Mark Yarhouse and Warren Throckmorton, of the private Christian school Grove City College, in 2002 published "Ethical Issues in Attempts to Ban Reorientation Therapies", which argues that conversion therapy should be available out of respect for a patient’s values system and because there is evidence that it can be effective. They state that studies from the 1950s–1980s generally reported rates of positive outcomes at about 30%, with more recent survey research generally consistent with the extant data. Their paper was partly a response to Jack Drescher's 2001 paper, "Ethical issues surrounding attempts to change sexual orientation", which used the principle of "Do no harm" to argue against conversion therapy.

Medical, scientific and legal views

Further information: [[:Biology and sexual orientation, Environment and sexual orientation, sexual orientation and medicine and homosexuality and psychology]]

American medical consensus

The medical and scientific consensus in the United States is that conversion therapy is potentially harmful, but that there is no scientifically adequate research demonstrating either its effectiveness or harmfulness. Anecdotal claims of cures and harm counterbalance each other. Mainstream medical bodies state that conversion therapy can be harmful because it may exploit guilt and anxiety, thereby damaging self-esteem and leading to depression and even suicide. There is also concern in the mental health community that the advancement of conversion therapy can cause social harm by disseminating inaccurate views about sexual orientation and the ability of gay and bisexual people to lead happy, healthy lives.

Mainstream health organizations critical of conversion therapy include the American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Counseling Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Association of School Administrators, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Association of School Psychologists, the American Academy of Physician Assistants, and the National Education Association.

Mainstream medical organizations do not accept the anecdotal evidence offered by conversion therapists for several reasons. These include the fact that the results are not published in peer-reviewed journals, but tend to be released to the mass media and the Internet, that random samples of subjects are not used and results are reliant upon the subjects' own self-reported outcomes or on evaluations by therapists which may be subject to social desirability bias, that the evidence is gathered over short periods of time and there is little follow-up data to determine whether the therapy was effective over the long-term, that the evidence does not demonstrate a change in sexual orientation but merely a reduction in same-sex behavior, that the possibility that subjects may be bisexual and have simply been convinced to restrict their sexual activity to the opposite sex was not considered, there is often no control group to rule out the possibility that other things, such as being motivated to change, were the true cause of any change the researchers observed in the study participants, that conversion therapists falsely assume that homosexuality is a mental disorder, and that their research focuses almost exclusively on gay men and rarely includes lesbians.

Ethics guidelines

In 1998, the American Psychiatric Association issued a statement opposing any treatment which is based upon the assumption that homosexuality is a mental disorder or that a person should change their orientation, but did not have a formal position on other treatments that attempt to change a person's sexual orientation. In 2000, they augmented that statement by saying that as a general principle, a therapist should not determine the goal of treatment, but recommends that ethical practitioners refrain from attempts to change clients' sexual orientation until more research is available.

The American Counseling Association has stated that they do not offer or condone any training to educate and prepare a counselor to practice conversion therapy. They strongly suggest counselors do not refer clients to a conversion therapist or to proceed cautiously once they know the counselor fully informs clients of the unproven nature of the treatment and the potential risks and takes steps to minimize harm to clients. However, "it is of primary importance to respect a client's autonomy to request a referral for a service not offered by a counselor." A counselor performing conversion therapy "must define the techniques/procedures as 'unproven' or 'developing' and explain the potential risks and ethical considerations of using such techniques/procedures and take steps to protect clients from possible harm." The counselor must also provide complete information about the treatment, offer referrals to gay-affirmative counselors, discuss the right of clients, understand the client's request within a cultural context, and only practice within their level of expertise.

The American Psychological Association "is concerned about [conversion] therapies and their potential harm to patients ... Any person who enters into therapy to deal with issues of sexual orientation has a right to expect that such therapy would take place in a professionally neutral environment absent of any social bias." The APA stated, with regard to conversion therapy,

... that psychologists do not knowingly participate in or condone unfair discriminatory practices ... do not engage in unfair discrimination based on sexual orientation ... respect the rights of individuals to privacy, confidentiality, self-determination and autonomy ... , try to eliminate the effect on their work of biases based on cultural, individual and role differences due to sexual orientation .. where differences of sexual orientation significantly affect psychologist's work concerning particular individuals or groups, psychologists obtain the training, experience, consultation, or supervision necessary to ensure the competence of their services, or they make appropriate referrals ... do not make false or deceptive statements concerning the scientific or clinical basis for their services ... obtain appropriate informed consent to therapy or related procedures which generally implies that the client or patient (1) has the capacity to consent, (2) has been informed of significant information concerning the procedure, (3) has freely and without undue influence expressed consent, and (4) consent has been appropriately documented ... [and that] the American Psychological Association urges all mental health professionals to take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness that has long been associated with homosexual orientation." (internal quotes, brackets, and ellipses omitted).

International medical views

See also: LGBT rights in Denmark

See also: LGBT rights in Finland

See also: LGBT rights in Germany

See also: LGBT rights in Norway

See also: LGBT rights in the United Kingdom

The development of theoretical models of sexual orientation in countries outside the United States that have established mental health professions often follows the history within the U.S. (although often at a slower pace), shifting from pathological to non-pathological conceptions of homosexuality. The World Health Organization's ICD-10, which along with the DSM-IV is widely used internationally, states that "sexual orientation by itself is not to be regarded as a disorder". It lists ego-dystonic sexual orientation as a disorder instead, which it defines as occurring where "the gender identity or sexual preference (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or prepubertal) is not in doubt, but the individual wishes it were different because of associated psychological and behavioural disorders, and may seek treatment in order to change it."

Legal issues

In 2005, Love in Action, an ex-gay ministry based in Memphis, was investigated by the Tennessee Department of Health and the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities for providing counselling and mental health care without a licence, and for treating adolescents without their consent. There have been reports that teenagers have been forcibly treated with conversion therapy on other occasions. In 2006, a report by the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce outlined evidence that conversion therapy groups are increasingly focusing on children. Several legal researchers have responded to these events by arguing that parents who force their children into aggressive conversion therapy programs are committing child abuse under various state statutes.

There have been few, if any, medical malpractice lawsuits filed on the basis of conversion therapy. Laura A. Gans suggested in an article published in The Boston University Public Interest Law Journal that this is because there is an "historic reluctance of consumers of mental health services to sue their care givers" and because of "the difficulty associated with establishing the elements of... causation and harm... given the intangible nature of psychological matters." Gans also suggested that a tort cause of action for intentional infliction of emotional distress might be sustainable against therapists who use conversion therapy on patients who specifically say that his or her anxiety does not arise from his or her sexuality.

In one of the few published U.S. cases dealing with conversion therapy, the Ninth Circuit addressed the topic in the context of an asylum application. A Russian citizen "had been apprehended by the Russian militia, registered at a clinic as a 'suspected lesbian,' and forced to undergo treatment for lesbianism, such as 'sedative drugs' and hypnosis.... The Ninth Circuit held that the conversion treatments to which Pitcherskaia had been subjected constituted mental and physical torture. The court rejected the argument that the treatments to which Pitcherskaia had been subjected did not constitute persecution because they had been intended to help her, not harm her.... The court stated that 'human rights laws cannot be sidestepped by simply couching actions that torture mentally or physically in benevolent terms such as "curing" or "treating" the victims.'" "

Bibliography

• Bright, Chuck (2004), "Deconstructing Reparative Therapy: An Examination of the Processes Involved When Attempting to Change Sexual Orientation", Clinical Social Work Journal, 32 (4), doi:10.1007/s10615-004-0543-2 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Domenici, Thomas; Lesser, Ronnie C. (1995), Disorienting Sexuality: Psychoanalytic Reappraisals of Sexual Identities, New York: Routledge, ISBN 0415911982
• Drescher, Jack (1998), "I'm Your Handyman: A History of Reparative Therapies", Journal of Homosexuality, 36 (1), doi:10.1300/J082v36n01_02 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Drescher, Jack; Zucker, Kenneth (2006), Ex-Gay Research: Analyzing the Spitzer Study and Its Relation to Science, Religion, Politics, and Culture, New York: Harrington Park Press, ISBN 1-56023-557-8
• Drescher, Jack (1998), Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man, Hillsdale, New Jersey: The Analytic Press, ISBN 0881632082
• Gonsiorek, John; Weinrich, James (1991), Homosexuality:Research Implications for Public Policy, Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications, Inc, ISBN 0-8039-3764-4
• Haldeman, Douglas C. (2002), "Gay Rights, Patient Rights: The Implications of Sexual Orientation Conversion Therapy", Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 33 (3), doi:10.1037//0735-7028.33.3.260 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Johnson, Chris (2008-05-12), Robinson backs out of symposium on "ex-gays", Washington Blade
• Plowman, William (2008-05-12), Homosexuality Panel Squelched by Gay Activists, NPR
• Shidlo, Ariel; Schroeder, Michael (2002), "Changing Sexual Orientation: A Consumers' Report", Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 33 (3), doi:10.1037//0735-7028.33.3.249
• Spitzer, Robert L. (2003), "Can Some Gay Men and Lesbians Change Their Sexual Orientation? 200 Participants Reporting a Change from Homosexual to Heterosexual Orientation", Archives of Sexual Behavior, 32 (5), doi:10.1023/A:1025647527010, PMID 14567650 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Yarhouse, Mark A.; Throckmorton, Warren (2002), "Ethical Issues in Attempts to Ban Reorientation Therapies" (PDF), Psychotherapy: Theory/Research/Practice/Training, 39 (1), doi:10.1037//0033-3204.39.1.66, retrieved 2007-08-28
• Yoshino, Kenji (2002), "Covering", Yale Law Journal, 111 (4)

External links

• American Counseling Association ("Research does not support conversion therapy as an effective treatment modality.... There is potential for harm when clients participate in conversion therapy.")
• American Psychiatric Association ("In the last four decades, 'reparative' therapists have not produced any rigorous scientific research to substantiate their claims of cure. Until there is such research available, APA recommends that ethical practitioners refrain from attempts to change individuals' sexual orientation, keeping in mind the medical dictum to first, do no harm.")
• American Psychological Association ("Mental health professional organizations call on their members to respect a person’s (client’s) right to self determination")
• World Health Organization (Those with an egodystonic sexual orientation "may seek treatment in order to change it".)