Motivation
Another of the controversial topics dealt with in our text, and about which we occasionally take flak (from the conservative right), is the discussion of sexual orientation and the seeming difficulty of changing such. Some of our student readers, and perhaps a few of our adopters, may therefore note that Robert Spitzer's widely reported study of successful sexual conversions seem to contradict the text. Anticipating such, and wanting to keep abreast of the latest research, I obtained a copy of the report and wrote this synopsis for my file, which I include below for your information. For more information regarding the discussion, visit:
http://rainbowallianceopenfaith.homestead.com/SpitzerStudy.html.
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Robert Spitzer, Columbia University, kindly sent me an electronic copy of his interesting research on “200 Subjects Who Claim to Have Changed Their Sexual Orientation from Homosexual to Heterosexual” as presented at the recent American Psychiatric Association meeting. The presentation has understandably gained enormous media attention from television and print media, especially given that it was Spitzer--the chair of the working group that created earlier editions of the DSM (the psychiatric diagnostic manual) and a special advisor to the DSM-IV task force–-who in 1973 “played a central role in eliminating homosexuality as a mental disorder from DSM-II” (his words). After talking with several self-proclaimed ex-gays at the 1999 APA meeting, “I started to wonder, could it be that some homosexuals could actually change their sexual orientation?”
To satisfy his curiosity, he “with great difficulty”--and with assistance from ex-gay ministries, from NARTH (the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality), and from others who “regard homosexuality as a treatable developmental disorder”--managed to interview 274 such individuals by phone (74 of whom were excluded because it was their behavior and identity, not their attraction that had changed). The interviewees “called my office to arrange for an interview. . . Indeed, the primary motivation for participating in the study for almost all subjects was their interest in providing evidence, from their own experience, that homosexuality can be changed and to offer hope to others.”
Five or more years after the change effort, most claimed to have switched from primarily homosexual to heterosexual attraction, though only 17 percent of the males and 54 percent of the females had “exclusively heterosexual” attraction. When masturbating, 46 percent of the males and 18 percent of the females acknowledged same sex fantasies on 20 percent or more of occasions. What the sexual reorientation efforts did for these folks, Spitzer concludes, is not trigger a 180 degree U-turn but rather move them from one point to another “along a multidimensional continuum”--and with accompanying increases in personal well-being for these conflicted individuals.
My reflections
1) This study collects and documents a sample of ex-gay testimonials. Although the proponents of sexual conversion are already touting this as compelling evidence for sexual transformation, Spitzer, though impressed, concludes that “the difficulty finding subjects suggests the likelihood that the substantial changes reported by our subjects are relatively uncommon in all individuals who make a change effort.” Indeed, if there are 5 million gay or lesbian American adults (roughly 2.5 percent of America’s 200 million adults), the 200 partially changed individuals whom ex-gay ministries, NARTH, and other therapists and individuals were able to locate represent an infinitesimal percentage.
2) If a parallel effort were made to collect and document the failed efforts of other homosexuals to change through ex-gay ministries, NARTH, and other therapy and self-change efforts, how many times more cases would it be possible to collect?
3) Retrospective patient recall is notoriously untrustworthy. Given that the interviewees' responses were nuanced, not seemingly pre-programmed, Spitzer understandably accepts their sincerity. But a large research literature documents people’s tendencies to construct memories that support their current views. “The speed, magnitude, and certainty” with which people revise their own histories is “striking” reported Clark University attitude researchers D. R. Wixon and James Laird. As I report in my forthcoming Social Psychology, 7th edition, “Sometimes our present view is that we've improved—in which case we may misrecall our past as more unlike the present than it actually was. This tendency resolves a puzzling pair of consistent findings. Those who participate in psychotherapy and self-improvement programs for weight-control, anti-smoking, and exercise, show only modest improvement on average. Yet they often claim considerable benefit (Myers, 2001). Michael Conway and Michael Ross (1985, 1986) explain why: Having expended so much time, effort, and money on self-improvement, people may think, ‘I may not be perfect now, but I was worse before; this did me a lot of good.’”
4) Given the ambiguity of after-the-fact testimonials (one can collect such for consumers of snake oil, homeopathy, and therapeutic touch), researchers who evaluate therapeutic effectiveness now routinely turn to the most powerful tool for winnowing wishful thinking from reality: the controlled experiment. It’s routine, and it’s a wonder that both believers and skeptics of sexual reorientation are not calling for such research (which to my knowledge has never been done). It would involve three simple steps:
a) Identify a group of volunteers wishing to undergo sexual reorientation. Ask them to report their feelings and fantasies, and measure their sexual responding to same- and other-sex stimuli.
b) Randomly assign some to receive the treatment, the others to a wait-list control group (and/or to various alternative therapies).
c) At some point after the treatment, reassess sexual orientation by the self-report and behavioral measures.
Would this experiment be precluded by cost or by too few volunteers (who would lack the patience to permit their assignment to the control group)? Other therapy experiments, including the big NIMH depression/therapy experiment, suggest that this could be done. But if not, it would still be informative, even without the control group, to follow a group of people seeking sexual reorientation from before to after therapy.
Surely, given the cultural significance of this debate, this research will at some point be done and will prove informative.