Aversion Therapy

Conversion Therapy and Mental Disorders Some believe homosexuality can be corrected through therapy (Pappas, 2012). Different types of therapy aimed at treating homosexuals, known as gay conversion therapy, dates to the early 1900s. Sigmund Freud received a lesbian patient in 1920, who’s father requested that she be turned heterosexual. Freud responded by saying that sexuality was not that simple, but he would attempt to change the daughter’s sexuality. However, Freud ended the therapy due to the girl’s hostility. Aversion therapy, also known as psychotherapy, uses negative feedback to condition the patients (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2018). Doctors showed same-sex erotica to homosexual patients undergoing aversion therapy (Pappas, 2012). While viewing the erotica, the

Doctors promised their families that the patient’s homosexuality would be cured. The patients suffered through treatments such as drugs, shock therapy, castrations, and lobotomies. For example, doctors performed transorbital lobotomies by inserting a pick-like instrument through the patient’s eyelid to reach the prefrontal area of the brain. After doing so, the doctor moved the medical instrument around to separate the white matter of the patient’s brain (Hall, 2015). Dr. Walter Freeman was well known for his practice with lobotomies and up to 40 percent of his lobotomy patients were homosexual (Scot, 2017). Freeman pioneered the transorbital lobotomy as he was not a surgeon and unable to drill holes through a patient’s skull (Hall, 2015). In place of an anesthetic, Freeman used an electroconvulsive shock box while preforming his lobotomies. A large majority of Freeman’s patients became seriously disabled after their lobotomy and required the care of mental institutions (Scot, 2017). The practice of lobotomies never underwent any serious study, but was widely practiced by doctors (Hall,