Country United Kingdom Originally published 1971 Subject Homosexuality | Language English Pages 288 Page count 288 | |
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Authors Series International series of monographs in experimental psychology | ||
Homosexual Behaviour: Therapy and Assessment is a 1971 book about the treatment of homosexuality by M. P. Feldman and M. J. MacCulloch.
Contents
Summary
The authors describe their attempts to change the sexual orientation of seventy-three homosexuals through aversion therapy. Two of their subjects were women, the other seventy-one were men. Some of the subjects had been compelled to participate by court order. Feldman and MacCulloch found that the success or failure of the procedure depended on the past sexual history of the subjects: those who had some previous heterosexual experience or fantasy apparently benefited from it, reporting a cessation of homosexual desires and activities that lasted at least a year after the end of the treatment, while those who had never experienced heterosexual feeling or activity were not changed by the treatment. Feldman and MacCulloch argue that the former group were "secondary" homosexuals who had acquired their homosexuality through learning and were therefore susceptible to unlearning it. The other group were "primary" homosexuals who had been born with their orientation, perhaps due to an abnormal hormonal environment in the womb.
Scholarly reception
Neuroscientist Simon LeVay writes that Feldmand and MacCulloch's study was followed by others, some of which asserted that their claims of success were exaggerated and that men who had apparently become heterosexual through aversion therapy reverted to homosexuality within a few months. Other studies argued that Feldman and MacCulloch had not used the best techniques.