Dr. Robert L. Spitzer played a pivotal role in the 1973 decision by the APA to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. Spitzer used to believe homosexuals couldn't change but after studying the results of therapy he now believes homosexuals can change
Spitzer Study Just Published: Evidence Found for Effectiveness of Reorientation Therapy
"The results of a study conducted by Dr. Robert L. Spitzer have just been published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 32, No. 5, October 2003, pp. 403-417.
Spitzer's findings challenge the widely-held assumption that a homosexual orientation is "who one is" -- an intrinsic part of a person's identity that can never be changed.
The study has attracted particularly attention because its author, a prominent psychiatrist, is viewed as a historic champion of gay activism. Spitzer played a pivotal role in 1973 in removing homosexuality from the psychiatric manual of mental disorders...
Although examples of "complete" change in orientation were not common, the majority of participants did report change from a predominantly or exclusively homosexual orientation before therapy to a predominantly or exclusively heterosexual orientation in the past year as a result of reparative therapy.
These results would seem to contradict the position statements of the major mental health organizations in the United States, which claim there is no scientific basis for believing psychotherapy effective in addressing same-sex attraction. Yet Spitzer reports evidence of change in both sexes, although female participants reported significantly more change than did male participants..."
Getting your facts straight: Jon Dougherty says PC crowd bucks new homosexual study
It never fails. When a researcher finds evidence of something that goes against the current grain of politically correct thought, that researcher and his data are trashed like yesterday's issue of Salon.com.
According to Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, the professor of psychiatry at Columbia University who has just authored a new study on gay-straight behavior, at least "some" people who used to be homosexuals have been able to "convert" themselves into heterosexuals.
Spitzer said he isn't able to estimate what percentage of homosexuals can change their sexual orientation, but he did say that his research "shows [at least that] some people can change from gay to straight, and we ought to acknowledge that."
Having been on his end of the anti-PC bandwagon, I pity Spitzer. He's broken a cardinal rule: Questioning conventional PC wisdom in public and from a position of knowledge and authority while clouding a traditionally PC issue with annoying facts is strictly verboten.
His treatment at the hands of the PC police will be worse that it already has been after the results of his study are published -- and they will be published somewhere, I guarantee it. He'll be vilified and pilloried by the press, his colleagues, and the various gay groups out there who see his study as a threat to their existence, if not their way of life -- though nowhere in his study does he call for a ban on homosexuality.
Spitzer Forced to Cancel Appearance to Discuss His Ex-‘Gay’ Study
"Citing concern for his family, Dr. Robert Spitzer, author of a just-released study about people overcoming homosexuality, canceled his appearance at a press conference on Monday. Dr. Spitzer had caused an uproar last week with his survey of 200 former homosexuals. An architect of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, Spitzer said he had reassessed the issue and now believes that some people can change their desires from homosexual to heterosexual.
He had planned to appear at a press conference at the National Press Club, hosted by Anthony Falzarano of Parents and Friends Ministries, a support group for families with loved ones who struggle with homosexuality. But Falzarano, himself a former homosexual, instead read a statement by Dr. Spitzer announcing his regret and citing the vitriolic tone that critics have taken toward him since the study’s release. Falzarano released copies of several e-mails sent to Spitzer and to Columbia University, where Spitzer is a professor of psychiatry. One of them, sent by James Minter, Columbia's Associate Director of Undergraduate Admission, read, in part:
You are an embarrassment to the University and a disgrace to science. Your “findings” are, in a word, despicable. If you are in need of a gay-related topic on which to do some constructive research, why not address the pathological homophobia of the bigots and reactionaries who will embrace your latest pronouncements? Better yet, why not address the crippling self-hatred and internalized homophobia of the desperate men and women who will find your hogwash a misguided reason to prolong their anguish, rather than to come out of the closet and into the light?
An excerpt from "Spitzer Study Critiqued In the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy"
A recent issue of the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy was entirely devoted to Robert L. Spitzer and his study, recently published in the prestigious Archives of Sexual Behavior. One author after another, the Journal authors--all gay activists-- devoted their efforts to a critical analysis of the Spitzer study. The opening editorial by psychiatrist Jack Drescher set the tone for this issue of the journal. Drescher couched the malleability of homosexuality as a question central to the "cultural wars," but not to science. And it's the cultural wars, not science, that seemed to occupy center-stage in all the ensuing articles.
Another commentator, Theo Sandfort, suggested that Spitzer should not have published the study at all because of the delicacy of the topic, because the issue of homosexuality is "charged" in cultural debates, and because of the limitations of the study (Sandfort lists his concerns in that order).
Psychiatrist Charles Silverstein, author of The Joy of Gay Sex, devoted his commentary to a scorching criticism of religious-faith traditions, accompanied by accusations of bias in Spitzer's subject selection. Silverstein has a preference for the Shidlo-Schroeder study, which sought to document the harm experienced by some reorientation-therapy clients. The Shidlo-Schroeder study was conducted by researchers who at least initially, selected their participants through an advertisement in gay publications that said, "Help Us Document the Damage of Homophobic Therapies."
An analysis of the media response to the Spitzer study was provided in the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy by Lund and Renna. They offer a "conspiracy" theory of the Spitzer study, noting how "media routines dictate that coverage of scientific issues which intersect with political or cultural ones tend to minimize the science, and focus instead on the political or cultural 'conflict.'" They fail to note, however, that a long series of gay-friendly media stories during the past ten years--stories about "gay genes," "gay brains," and children raised in gay-headed households--has been heralded almost uncritically, on a scientific level, by the popular media as evidence to prove the merit of gay social causes.
Much of the rest of the Lund-Renna commentary is basically a critique of the validity of the ex-gay movement, and an attempt to de-legitimize the efforts of ex-gays to change.
The article in the Journal by Wayne Besen could only be characterized as polemical; such polemics were justified by the journal's editor, Jack Drescher, because they were said to be a "representative sample of the political reception" of the Spitzer study within the gay community.
The commentary is vintage Wayne Besen. He concludes his diatribe with the following:
"In the end, however, the real loser is Dr. Spitzer. Whether he was an over-the-hill stage horse galloping toward the limelight or a court jester hood-winked by a scheming religious right is unimportant.
"What matters is that Spitzer's embarrassing travesty of scholarship will surely go down as his defining work, a professional pockmark that will indelibly taint his once splendid career..."
With the limitations that are inherent to all such studies, Spitzer employed the best rigor available for such research protocols. I am certain that Spitzer would have received accolades from the scientific community had he studied a less controversial topic, employing the exact same methodology as in this study. His sample size was larger than those in previous studies. He was very detailed in his assessment and carefully considered the affective components of the homosexual experience. Any bias in interview coding was virtually eliminated by near-perfect interrater scores. He limited his pool of applicants to those reporting at least 5 years of sustained change from a homosexual to a heterosexual orientation. His structured interview clearly described how the participants were evaluated. His entire set of data is available for scrutiny by other researchers.
Spitzer's conclusions are simply this: based on his study, there is evidence to suggest that some gay men and lesbians are not only able to change self-identity, but are able to modify core features of sexual orientation, including fantasies.
One of the few rational, scientific commentaries on the Spitzer study was offered by Scott L. Hershberger. Dr. Hershberger, a distinguished scholar and statistician, elected to respond in a Commentary to the Spitzer research (Hershberger's article was published in the same issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior as the Spitzer study was) by conducting a Guttman scalability analysis. This is a scalogram to determine whether or not reported changes occur in a cumulative, orderly fashion.
Hershberger's conclusion:
"The orderly, law-like pattern of changes in homosexual sexual behavior, homosexual self-identification, and homosexual attraction and fantasy observed in Spitzer's study is strong evidence that reparative therapy can assist individuals in changing their homosexual orientation to a heterosexual orientation.
"Now it is up to those skeptical of reparative therapy to provide comparably strong evidence to support their position. In my opinion, they have yet to do so."
What I find most intriguing, and somewhat ironic is that Spitzer did in 2001 what he did in 1973: he challenged the prevailing orthodoxy. He challenged the assumption that "every desire for change in sexual orientation is always the result of societal pressure and never the product of a rational, self-directed goal." In the particular sample he studied, Dr. Spitzer concluded that many participants "... made substantial changes in sexual arousal and fantasy--not merely behavior." Even subjects who made less substantial change believed it to be extremely beneficial.
"Like most psychiatrists," says Dr. Spitzer, "I thought that homosexual behavior could be resisted, but sexual orientation could not be changed. I now believe that's untrue--some people can and do change..."
An excerpt from: Paglia: The energy mess and fascist gays
"... Which brings us to another subject, the furor this past month over a report by psychiatrist Robert Spitzer of Columbia University that, from his rather cursory interviews with 153 men and 47 women, the "reparative therapy" endorsed by conservative Protestant groups can in some cases change sexual orientation from gay to straight. That Spitzer had helped to persuade the American Psychiatric Association to drop the classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973 makes his current study harder to dismiss.
Nevertheless, screeching gay activists immediately descended on the media to denounce and defame Spitzer as a tool of the far right. This was a good example of the fascist policing of public discourse in this country by nominal liberals who have become as unthinkingly wedded to dogma as any junior member of the Spanish Inquisition. Why should the fluidity of sexual orientation threaten any gay secure in his or her identity?
What gay ideologues, inflated like pink balloons with poststructuralist hot air, can't admit, of course, is that heterosexuality is nature's norm, enforced by powerful hormonal cues at puberty. In the past decade, one shoddy book after another, rapturously applauded by p.c. reviewers, has exaggerated the incidence of homosexuality in the animal world and, without due regard for reproductive adaptations caused by environmental changes, toxins or population pressure, reductively interpreted bonding or hierarchical behavior as gay in the human sense.
Because of the unblushing dishonesty of strident activists and campus "queer theorists," whose general knowledge of science would fit into Marie Antoinette's thimble, we are ironically further from understanding homosexuality than we were in 1970, when popular culture was moving into the seductive gender-bending era typified by the brilliant David Bowie. With the emphasis on external "politics," all respect for psychology has been lost. Did no one notice the grotesquely misogynous dialogue put into gay men's mouths on "Queer as Folk"? That kind of catty aversion to the female body is learned, not inborn, and it can be partly traced to early family relations, before personal memory has even gelled.
My political philosophy as a libertarian says that government has no business intervening in any consensual private behavior. My professional ethic as a thinker and writer, however, says that self-knowledge is our ultimate responsibility. In vicious attacks like the one on Spitzer, gay activists, with all their good intentions, are aligning themselves with the forces of ignorance and repression. Too little reliable work is currently being done in homosexuality because free inquiry cannot be conducted in a politicized atmosphere of harassment and intimidation..."