‘Ex-gay’ psychiatrist follows repudiation with apology
The US psychiatrist who recently repudiated a controversial and much-criticised study claiming gay people could change their sexual orientation if they were “highly motivated” enough has now also publicly apologised to the gay community and victims of reparative therapy.
Dr Robert Spitzer, the psychiatrist responsible for the study, was ironically at the forefront of moves in the early 1970s to have homosexuality removed from the list of mental disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), which eventually occurred in 1973.
In 2001 however, Spitzer (pictured) published a paper which included interviews with over 200 people who had gone through so-called ‘ex-gay’ programs.
The study did not make any claims about the success rate of ex-gay therapy but Spitzer concluded that the sessions, many with religious overtones, worked for a highly select group of motivated individuals.
Following an interview with Prospect Magazine earlier this month where Spitzer, 80, admitted he was wrong to have the study published by the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the psychiatrist decided to write a letter to the journal’s editor, Dr Ken Zucker.
In the letter, obtained by US website Truth Wins Out, Spitzer said that there was at least one “fatal flaw” in the published study.
“I believe I owe the gay community an apology for my study making unproven claims of the efficacy of reparative therapy. I also apologize to any gay person who wasted time and energy undergoing some form of reparative therapy because they believed that I had proven that reparative therapy works with some “highly motivated” individuals,” Spitzer wrote.
“I offered several (unconvincing) reasons why it was reasonable to assume that the subject’s reports of change were credible and not self-deception or outright lying. But the simple fact is that there was no way to determine if the subject’s accounts of change were valid.”
Since being published over a decade ago, Spitzer’s study has been widely quoted as evidence by many anti-gay groups as well as fundamentalist religious organisations in the US and abroad that ex-gay therapies work.
- Tags: Archives of Sexual Behavior, Dr Ken Zucker, Dr Robert Spitzer, Ex-Gay Therapy, Psychiatry, Religion, Reparative Therapy, Study, SX, USA, World
Comments (7)
why i wish that when i was 18 to 21 one that age i belieave is a good age befor u even starte to think about having sex then i wish that i was able at that age been gay as i am to day like i was then to beable to be married to a boy friend and have a settle relation ship from that age then i learnt that about age thirty that gay people no one for that matter gay or stright needed a law to say they could get married if i hade of knowen this at age 18 to 21 one i would of looked for someone to settle down and get married so really tho laws good it only keeps dishonest honest as when ur are honest with ur self and your family and friends law helps with understanding with the right education along with law to say why we do have thease laws thats me for now but please parents who have gay children i want u to ask ur selfs this question do u want your gay children to be happy and have a happy life to thats a very emportant question and if you have the right attitude im sure u will choose yes i like my gay children to be happy so let them have a gay lover and surport them as a couple just like u do with ur strights children and parents dont get ur gay children to marry strights just to keep u as a parent happy as this makes your children un happy and they try not to show it so parents i want u all to ask ur self this question i mention and when u have a happy gay couple im sure u parents will be happy to because u parents would like ur gay children to be happy have a great day
like we need to learn that some parents need to be educated to except there gay children to and parents need to learn that hay dont con your gay children to be stright just because u and ur parents want grandchildren and allso grand parents dont lay it on gay children i want grand children as lots of studys have been keeped quit that some gay adults can have children and allso hermapradites that are allso clased as gay people can have children there self ive meet them this is true allso to thos who cant have children and theres lot of strights that can have children to can adop children after all u might be given a child a nice loving couple as parents children its a proven fact that children that grow up with 2 parents of same sex grow up just as normal more of more happer and more understanding to wards life then what they would from ur every day strights couples allso its well knowen fact that 2 parents that love eacher and are happer with each other weather they are gay or stright the children have a better chance in life why i like adotion is adption is highly recarmended because the children come first before they will adopt children to any one they put the children best interst at heart first thats why they really check out couples to make sure couples can give children a safe home allso its a well knowen fact that couples that try to have children and cant fall pregant then they adopt children they find the marjority of thease couples end up falling pregnant later in life because the stress of trying to fall pregant disapears and then they push the adopted children aside so watch this so it does not happen thease are things we learn thru life
they have allso learnt to teach bi sexuals to understand weather they are more gay then stright thru extencive studys they learnt that when young adults its best not to try to get a gay person to sleep with a female as later in life they learn that they are more gay so they should of been educated to sleep with same sex its a proven fact that the marjority of bisexuals once they go from girl to boy they prefer boy in stead of girls so they learnt to educated children and parents to except and make knowen even if parents dont sucspect there children to be gay let there children know that they are gay friendly parents so as children are growing up if they realise that they are attracted to same sex that there parents are essy to talk to about there csexuality this really saves a lot of confussion for the children
been a miner when it come to sex is wrong thats a starte for the miner poet for gay people its a proven fact that when yuor relise that u are attracted to same sex make sure urecieve the right advice to nurture your natural gay sexuality as its a prove fact trying to change a cgay person sexuality realy does more harm to the person so with todays studys and like i was one of the lucky ones in the beging as i was protected from age 8 up but found that strights needed to be educated of this fact that as soon as a gay person realises that his or she gay nurture them into excepting there gay sexuality and yes thank god they took mmental illness away from the gay comunity they tryed it on me for dressing fem and i defead them as i have a good sychritris that understands gay sexuality thease day people are learning to except me as fem and have notice in qld austraila there get better at excepting gay people and learning to treat gay people with respect have a great day
This guy should be on trail in the court of law for deception. He is in a place of power due to his job and has abused this power.
What about nudity? Could that change a person's sexual orientation? Could a gay man become straight, and a straight man become gay?
This is actually quite a big deal in the history of gay relations with the rest of humanity. Spitzer allowed himself to be swayed possibly by vested interets in the US who would have found it much more comfortable to be able to point to a so-called scientific paper that offered the suggestion that at least some people could change their sexual orientation. Such a paper would give them leave to keep on talking about homosexuality being a choice, a lifestyle and that it could be changed.
This was 28 years after his colleagues in the American Psychiatric Association had removed homosexuality from the the list of mental disorders. Vast amounts of research was accomplished in the years following that decision to uphold, confirm and augment it. Spitzer's paper gave succour to the fundamentalist Christian lobby, the ulta-right lobby, the anti-gay lobby and a psychiatric rump that refused to acknowedge the scientific evidence in front of their eyes and instead rely upon outdated Freudian concepts that could not be empirically tested. These would go o to hang thier shingle as 'change specialists. The result: Spitzer's paper has caused an enormous amount of damage in the ten years or so that it has been around.
I will give this to him though: his retraction and subsequent apology and acknowledgment that he should not have published that paper in the manner that he did could not have been undertaken more publicly. It takes guts and a great deal of courage to do what he has done and I admire him for it. As an old man now, and the wisdom and respect that often comes with great age, I hope he can help to undo some of the damage.
The scribes of gay history now have a new chapter to write.