Gay to straight adapter
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The study, he said, was fatally flawed.
"I believe I owe the gay community an apology for my study making unproven claims of the efficacy of reparative therapy," Spitzer wrote.
Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior.
Conservative groups were delighted to have support from Spitzer, who wasn't tainted with religious bias or anti-gay ideology; gay organizations felt betrayed.
In the end, however, Spitzer came to agree with his critics. I didn’t know what I felt any more - except numb, and trapped.
No, this wasn’t a bad dream.
The patients argue they paid thousands of dollars for therapies that did not rid them of same-sex attractions, and that they then had to pay for mainstream therapy to repair the damage done by the conversion therapy. [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]
In a second case in California, a federal judge is hearing arguments against a new state law that bans conversion therapy for minors.
Early treatments in the 1960s and 70s included aversion therapy, such as shocking patients or giving them nausea-inducing drugs while showing them same-sex erotica, according to a 2004 article in the British Medical Journal.
Other methods included psychoanalysis or talk therapy, estrogen treatments to reduce libido in men, and even electroconvulsive therapy, in which an electric shock is used to induce a seizure, with side effects such as memory loss.
That was all I wanted back then.
.
(Many of the people studied in the early years were court-mandated to take the therapies, adding a coercive element to those outcomes.)The best-quality studies were more recent and qualitative, the APA task force found, meaning they focused not on the statistical effectiveness of treatment, but of the subjective experience.
"These studies show that enduring change to an individual's sexual orientation is uncommon," the task force wrote in their 2009 report.
5 Surprising Facts About Gay Conversion Therapy
Gay Therapy
Gay conversion therapy, as it is known, supposedly helps gay people overcome same-sex attractions. One of the stranger attempts was an effort by Viennese endocrinologist Eugen Steinach to transplant testicles from straight men into the scrotums of gay men in an attempt to rid them of same-sex desires.
The participants continued to report same-sex attractions after the conversion therapy, and were not significantly more attracted to the opposite gender.
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These studies did find that conversion therapy could be harmful, however.
Freud echoed modern psychologists by responding that changing sexual orientation was difficult and unlikely. He offered to see the woman anyway, but later broke off the therapy due to her hostility. Research has consistently found undergoing conversion therapy to be associated with negative mental health outcomes such as depression, substance abuse, and an increased risk of suicidality.
In recent years, governments around the world have taken steps to limit or ban conversion therapy, though the practice persists in some places.
In 1920, Sigmund Freud wrote of a lesbian patient whose father wanted to see her converted to heterosexuality. Negative effects included "loss of sexual feeling, depression, suicidality and anxiety."
What happens in conversion therapy?
Because conversion therapy is not a mainstream psychological treatment, there are no professional standards or guidelines for how it is conducted.
What’s more, LGBTQ-affirmative therapy—which validates the identities of sexual- and gender-diverse clients—has become increasingly available as societal acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities has become more widespread.
Gay conversion therapy: 'I thought being straight would make me happy'
After struggling to reconcile her sexuality and her religion, Shulli spent over a year undergoing gay conversion therapy
“I just want to be straight and that's the only reason I'm here.”
I closed my eyes and clenched my fists; although we were sat opposite each other face to face, I avoided the therapist’s gaze.
The group has religious links; for example, one of its founders and former president, psychologist Joseph Nicolosi, is a one-time spokesman for Focus on the Family. The bill was signed into law in September 2013. His therapist blamed his parents for Arana's homosexuality, and urged him to distance himself from his female best friends.
Chaim Levin, one of the men suing Jonah for deceptive practices, says that he quit conversion therapy after his therapist had him strip down and touch himself to "reconnect with his masculinity," according to the New York Times.
What's happening in the courts?
Two legal challenges are targeting conversion therapy.