 Appendix G | 
Reports and Studies |  Table of Contents |
Appendix F-2
C. SELECTED QUOTATIONS
"Approximately thirty per cent of male homosexuals who come to psychotherapy for any reason (not just for help with their sexual preference) can be converted to the heterosexual adaptation.
In 1952, Dr. Irving Bieber supervised a nine-year project studying male homosexuality. There were 77 members of the Society of Medical Psychoanalysts who supplied information on two patient samples--106 homosexual males and 100 heterosexual males. The outcome? "Of 106 homosexuals who undertook psychoanalysis... 29 (27 percent) became exclusively heterosexual..."
"During a ten-year period, from 1967 to 1977, I have treated psychoanalytically 55 overt homosexuals.... One can report... that the forty-four overt homosexuals who have undergone psychoanalytic therapy, twenty patients, nearly 50 percent, developed full heterosexual functioning and were able to develop love feelings for their heterosexual partners."
"Five years after publishing our study, a follow-up of patients showed that the one-third whose adaptation had shifted to heterosexuality remained so. And we have personally followed some patients for as long as 20 years who remained exclusively heterosexual."
"About eighty percent of homosexual men and women in Syntonic Therapy have been able to free themselves and achieve a healthy and satisfying heterosexual adjustment... These individuals were selected as follows: (1) They were not psychotic and they had the ability to work and function as self- supporting people. (2) They were not psychopathic and they had the ability to experience the emotions of fear and guilt and to be aware that they were not fulfilling their human potential. (3) They came to therapy for themselves, and not to please someone else. (4) They were able to direct their aggression therapeutically and were able to learn to work with themselves, between sessions, when in anxiety or panic states, rather than act out their problem homosexually. (5) They were strongly enough motivated to go through the inevitable rough spots of change without quitting, staying till they had resolved their problems."
"Recently I have worked with seven male homosexuals and three lesbians. The outcome of the therapy of these ten patients has been a successful reorientation in their sexual practices to heterosexuality in seven cases... In evaluating these patients, I found that the classification or the degree of homosexuality was not a factor in the effectiveness of the therapy."
Masters and Johnson worked with sixty-seven male homosexuals and fourteen lesbians who asked for conversion or reversion therapy to heterosexuality and said their failure rate was 28.4% after a follow-up of six years (pg. 402).... In treating sexual dysfunction in heterosexuals their failure rate was 20%. (pg. 408)
"...Homosexuality has a 30 to 50 per cent chance of reversing with psychiatric treatment." (pg. 519)
"...Combined therapy with homogeneous groups has been... the treatment of choice.... The rate of recovery among the homosexuals treated in these groups is 49 per cent." (pg. 532)
Eleven men, ages 21 through 35 , claimed they changed their sexual orientation "from exclusive and active homosexuality to exclusive heterosexuality through participation in a Pentecostal church fellowship. None of these men had ever sought professional treatment for their psychiatric reasons or for their homosexuality. The church had a crisis service for homosexuals which gave these men 'a welcome reception as homosexuals. No attempt was made to make them change their homosexuality. Rather, they were presented with the invitation to commit their life to Christ and the church. All subjects had an explicit Christian conversion or rededication. They were then invited into small church groups where they studied the Bible and learned expected Biblical patterns of mature lifestyle. This included an expectation to engage in loving, nonerotic relationships with both men and women in the fellowship groups.'" (pg. 1558)
"None of the subjects claimed a miraculous deliverance but rather 'the gradual diminution of their homosexual drives...'" (pg. 1555) Supervisor of the study, Dr. E. Mansell Pattison stated "that 8 of our 11 subjects amply demonstrated a 'cure.' The remaining 3 subjects had a major behavioral and intrapsychic shift to heterosexual behavior, but the persistence of homosexual impulses was still significant." (pg. 1560)
"Thus, all subjects in our sample demonstrated a strikingly profound shift in sexual orientation." (pg. 1555)
"The evidence suggest that cognitive change occurs first, followed by behavioral change, and finally intrapsychic resolution." (pg. 1562)
Psychologist Dr. Gerald van den Aardweg has counselled homosexuals for more than 20 years. In an extensive analysis of the 101 homosexual men he's worked with, he said, "Of those who continued treatment--60 percent of the total group--about two- thirds reached at least a satisfactory state of affairs for a long period of tome, By this is meant that the homosexual feelings had been reduced to occasional impulses at most while the sexual orientation had turned predominantly heterosexual, or that the homosexual feelings were completely absent, with or without predominance of heterosexual interests. Of this group, however, about one-third could be regarded as having been changed 'radically.' By interests this is meant that they did not have any more homosexual interests but had normal heterosexual feelings..." (pgs. 105-106)
"These results are still farm from perfect, but... the radically changed cases--from complete homosexuality to normal heterosexuality--refute the theory that therapy of homosexuality is pointless...." (pg. 107)
Dr. Edmund Bergler (graduated from Vienna's Medical School; served on staff at Freud Clinic from 1927-1937).
"In nearly thirty years, I have successfully concluded analyses of one hundred homosexuals... and have seen nearly five hundred cases in consultation... On the basis of the experience thus gathered, I make the positive statement that homosexuality has an excellent prognosis in psychiatric-psychoanalytic treatment of one to two years' duration, with a minimum of three appointments each week--provided the patient really wishes to change." (pg. 176)
"...And cure denotes not bisexuality, but real and unfaked heterosexuality." (pg. 279) ...The color of a person's eyes cannot be changed therapeutically, but homosexuality can be changed by psychotherapy." (pg. 166).
Dr. Bernard Berkowitz, Mildred Newman and Jean Owen (Berkowitz got his Ph.D. from New York University. Newman graduated from Hunter College; she trained with Theodore Reik; she completed analytic training at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis.)
"Analysts once thought they had little chance of changing homosexuals' preferences and had little success in that direction. But some refused to accept that and kept working with them, and we've found that a homosexual who really wants to change has a very good change of doing so. Now we're hearing all kinds of success stories."
Dr. Toby B. Bieber (Ph.D. from Columbia University; lecturer in psychology at New York University; clinical instructor in psychiatry at New York Medical College).
"Few, if any, homosexuals are satisfied with their condition, whether or not this is consciously admitted. Those who cling to their homosexual orientation and avoid contemplating possibilities for change are, by and large, chronically depressed, although episodes of gloom and despair may be rationalized to other situations. Strident public declarations about happy homosexuality are evidence of denial mechanisms...."
Dr. Anna Freud (studied with her father Sigmund Freud) In 1950, Dr. Anna Freud, "lectured in New York on the recent advances in treatment of homosexuals, stating that many of her patients lost their inversion as a result of analysis. This occurred even in those who had proclaimed their wish to remain homosexual when entering treatment, having started only to obtain relief from their homosexual symptoms."
Dr. Samuel Hadden (was associate professor of Psychiatry at University of Pennsylvania Medical School; pioneered use of group therapy in helping homosexuals).
"While there is little doubt that the homosexual is difficult to treat and is prone to break off treatment...if psychotherapists themselves come to adopt a less pessimistic attitude and view homosexuality simply as a pattern of maladaptation, greater numbers of such patients will be significantly helped."
In another article, Dr. Hadden states that not all mental health professionals are actually qualified to help the homosexual. For treatment to be successful, "a vital factor... is the therapist's attitude toward a particular disorder and those afflicted by it. If, for example, he feels that some aberrations cannot be successfully treated or feels any distaste for treating the condition, he will communicate his pessimism and dislike to the patient and failure is almost inevitable."
Dr. Lawrence J. Hatterer (M.D. from Columbia Medical School; basic psychiatric training at New York Medical College; served as Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Cornell Medical School).
"Over the past seventeen years I have evaluated 710 males troubled and untroubled by a vast spectrum of homosexually fantasy, impulse, act, and milieu. Since 1953 I have successfully and unsuccessful treated well over 200 of them.... I have also collected two to fifteen year follow-ups on some patients. Of this group, forty-nine patients recovered, nineteen partially recovered, seventy-six remained homosexual." (pgs. vii, viii)
"...Other therapists who have specialized in research and treatment of men troubled by homosexuality reported 23 per cent to 28 per cent of the motivated patients totally capable of a heterosexual readaptation. (pg. 94)
"...I've heard of hundreds of other men who went from a homosexual to a heterosexual adjustment on their own. (pg. 138)
"...A large undisclosed population has melted into heterosexual society, persons who behaved homosexuality in late adolescence and early adulthood, and who, on their own, resolved their conflicts and abandoned such behavior to go on to successful marriages or to bisexual patterns of adaptation. (pg. 14)
Dr. Arthur Janov (psychologist and psychiatric social worker at Los Angeles Children's Hospital; consultant to California Narcotic Outpatient Program; developed Primal Scream program.)
"I do not believe that there is a basic genetic homosexual tendency in man. If this were true, the cured patient would still have his homosexual needs, which he does not. (pg. 328)
"The homosexual act is not a sexual one. It is based on the denial of real sexuality and the acting out symbolically through sex of a need for love.... The homosexual has usually eroticized his need so that he appears to be highly sexed. Bereft of his sexual fix, his lover, he is like an addict without his connection; without his lover, he is in the pain that is always there but which is drained off sexually. But sex is not his goal--love is. (pg. 322)
"I have found that homosexual habits that have persisted for years have faded away in the face of reality." (pg. 322)
Dr. Jeffrey Keefe (Ph.D. in psychology from Fordham University; interned at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital; worked at Staten Island Mental Health, St. Vincent Medical Center; taught at Notre Dame).
"Can homosexuals change their orientation? The fact, reported in the literature, proves the possibility. I have seen some homosexuals in treatment--and have met more former homosexuals (including those who were exclusively so)--who now respond physically and emotionally as heterosexuals in successful marriages. Movement toward the heterosexual end of the Kinsey scale ordinarily requires strong motivation on the client's part, a skilled therapist, and unfortunately more often than not, financial resources...."
Dr. Judd Marmor (M.D. from Columbia University; served as resident neurologist at Montefiore Hospital; president of the American Psychiatric Association; president of American Academy of Psychoanalysis).
"The myth that homosexuality is untreatable still has wide currency among the public at large and among homosexuals themselves....
"There is little doubt that a genuine shift in preferential sex object choice can and does take place in somewhere between 20 and 50 per cent of patients with homosexual behavior who seek psychotherapy with this end in mind. The single most important prerequisite to reversibility is a powerful motivation to achieve such a change."
"Although some gay liberationists argue that it would be preferable to help these persons accept their homosexuality, this writer is of the opinion that, if they wish to change, they deserve the opportunity to try, with all the help that psychiatry can give them...."
Masters and Johnson (Dr. William H. Masters--M.D. from University of Rochester; served as Professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology for the School of Medicine of Washington University, Director of the Reproductive Biological Research Foundation and Co-director and Chairman of the Board of the Masters and Johnson Institute. Virginia E. Johnson studied at University of Missouri; Research Director of the Reproductive Biological Research Foundation; Co-director of the Masters and Johnson Institute).
"No longer should the qualified psychotherapist avoid the responsibility of either accepting the homosexual client in treatment...or referring him or her to an acceptable treatment source."
Dr. E. Mansell Pattison (studied at University of Oregon and University of Cincinnati; worked for the National Institutes of Mental Health; taught at Georgetown University, University of Washington, The University of California at Irvine and the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior of the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta).
Dr. Charles W. Socarides, M.D. (Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine; in 1995 received Distinguished Professor award from the Association of Psychoanalytic Psychologists, British Health Service; current President of National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality [N.A.R.T.H.])
"Even the most serious cases of homosexuality will yield to therapy if the patient seeks therapy when he feels severely distressed about being homosexual, not only because of guilt or shame but because he finds his homosexual life meaningless... (pg. 418)
"There is at present sufficient evidence that in a majority of cases homosexuality can be successfully treated by psychoanalysis... (pg. 3)
"While I can minimize neither the hard work and resoluteness required of the psychoanalyst in treating this serious disorder, nor the courage and endurance required of the patient, a successful resolution brings reward fully commensurate with their labors." (pg. 6)
Dr. William pg. Wilson (M.D. from Duke University; served as president of the Southern Psychiatric Association; chairman of the nuerology/psychiatry section of the American Medical Association).
"Treatment using dynamic individual psychotherapy, group therapy, aversion therapy, or psychotherapy with an integration of Christian principles will produce object-choice reorientation and successful heterosexual relationships in a high percentage of persons.... Homosexuals can change their orientation."
| Appendix G |
Reports and Studies | Table of Contents |