Conversion therapy: Difference between revisions

As [[societal attitudes toward homosexuality]] have become more tolerant over time, the most harsh conversion therapy methods such as aversion have been reduced. Secular conversion therapy is offered less often due to reduced medical pathologization of homosexuality, and religious practitioners have become more dominant.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Andrade |first1=G. |last2=Campo Redondo |first2=M. |title=Is conversion therapy ethical? A renewed discussion in the context of legal efforts to ban it |journal=Ethics, Medicine and Public Health |date=2022 |volume=20 |pages=100732 |doi=10.1016/j.jemep.2021.100732 }}</ref>

 

{{see also|Behavior modification}}

 

 

Aversion therapy was developed in [[Czechoslovak Socialist Republic|Czechoslovakia]] between 1950 and 1962 and in the British Commonwealth from 1961 into the mid-1970s. In the context of the Cold War, Western psychologists ignored the poor results of their Czechoslovak counterparts, who had concluded that aversion therapy was not effective by 1961 and recommended [[decriminalization of homosexuality]] instead.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Davison |first1=Kate |title=Cold War Pavlov: Homosexual aversion therapy in the 1960s |journal=History of the Human Sciences |date=2021 |volume=34 |issue=1 |pages=89–119 |doi=10.1177/0952695120911593|s2cid=218922981 }}</ref> Some men in the United Kingdom were offered the choice between prison and undergoing aversion therapy. It was also offered to a few British women, but was never the standard treatment for either homosexual men or women.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Spandler |first1=Helen |last2=Carr |first2=Sarah |title=Lesbian and bisexual women's experiences of aversion therapy in England |journal=History of the Human Sciences |date=2022 |volume=35 |issue=3–4 |pages=218–236 |doi=10.1177/09526951211059422|pmid=36090521 |pmc=9449443 |s2cid=245753251 }}</ref>

 

In the 1970s, behaviorist [[Hans Eysenck]] was one of the main advocates of counterconditioning with malaise-inducing drugs and [[electric shock]] for homosexuals. He wrote that this type of therapy was successful in nearly 50% of cases. However, his studies were disputed.{{sfn|Rolls|2019|p={{page needed|date=June 2023}}}}