Abstract:
For the majority of the twentieth century psychoanalysis and behaviour therapy dominated the psychiatric treatment of homosexuality, but despite this these disciplines and their methodologies have been misrepresented by scholars. As a result, the true nature and extent of their treatment methods have been obscured; behaviour therapy has been repeatedly simplified as scholars have often discussed the discipline in relation to only a very small number of its treatment methods, while psychoanalysis has often been discussed by scholars as an amalgamated entity with little or no attention paid to individual analysts. Similar treatment has also been afforded to conversion therapy and reparative therapy, the groups who took over the treatment of homosexuality after it was officially depathologized in 1973. All of these disciplines and groups were far more complex, were far more independent in their development, and had more differences, than scholars have previously recognised. By analysing exactly how these disciplines and groups professed to not only treat but to cure homosexuality, it becomes clear that the treatments and case studies that they declared successful were fraught with errors and flaws; these ranged from methodological and research errors, to flaws in their conceptualisation of homosexuality and the misrepresentation of their patients. Each discipline and group committed its own errors, many of which reflected the values or nature of the group that committed them. Regardless, all of these errors negatively affected the validity of their claims of success, and revealed a key feature that they each had in common; despite the complex natures and many differences between these disciplines and groups, not one was able to provide any reliable evidence that they had ever successfully cured a homosexual patient by making them heterosexual.
