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Like many other places in the western world, aversion therapy was conducted at BYU in the 1970s. At this time, aversion therapy was applied to a number of behaviors. At BYU the therapy was conducted following standards published by professional societies and unlike other places, it was only conducted on adults who gave their permission. The Church does not oversee research at BYU. | Like many other places in the western world, aversion therapy was conducted at BYU in the 1970s. At this time, aversion therapy was applied to a number of behaviors. At BYU the therapy was conducted following standards published by professional societies and unlike other places, it was only conducted on adults who gave their permission. The Church does not oversee research at BYU. | ||
− | * [http://www.fairblog.org/2012/01/04/fair-examination-6-overcoming-same-sex-attraction-blake-smith/ FAIR Examination 6 - Overcoming same-sex attraction - Blake Smith] - FAIR podcast of an LDS man who underwent aversion therapy at | + | * [http://www.fairblog.org/2012/01/04/fair-examination-6-overcoming-same-sex-attraction-blake-smith/ FAIR Examination 6 - Overcoming same-sex attraction - Blake Smith] - FAIR podcast of an LDS man who underwent aversion therapy at BYU-Idaho in 1973 |
* [http://www.fairblog.org/2012/02/01/fair-examination-8-aversion-therapy-at-byu-dr-eugene-thorne/ FAIR Examination 8 - Aversion therapy at BYU - Dr. Eugene Thorne] - FAIR podcast featuring Dr. Thorne, who oversaw aversion therapy studies at BYU, including that of Dr. McBride. | * [http://www.fairblog.org/2012/02/01/fair-examination-8-aversion-therapy-at-byu-dr-eugene-thorne/ FAIR Examination 8 - Aversion therapy at BYU - Dr. Eugene Thorne] - FAIR podcast featuring Dr. Thorne, who oversaw aversion therapy studies at BYU, including that of Dr. McBride. | ||
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The Church never conducted aversion therapies of any sort. They never recommended it, and they never mandated it.
Like many other places in the western world, aversion therapy was conducted at BYU in the 1970s. At this time, aversion therapy was applied to a number of behaviors. At BYU the therapy was conducted following standards published by professional societies and unlike other places, it was only conducted on adults who gave their permission. The Church does not oversee research at BYU.
In the mid-1970s a graduate student, Max McBride, conducted a study entitled Effect of Visual Stimuli in Electric Aversion Therapy. It appears that the study was conducted during 1974 and 1975 with the average length of treatment during the study being three months. The results of this study were published in August 1976 as McBride's PhD dissertation in the BYU Department of Psychology. McBride's research has recently been sensationalized and several incorrect claims have been made about his study. The following facts need to be kept in mind as the study is evaluated.
In the years since the study, some of the study participants have talked publicly about their experiences. Many of these reports are troubling to read, as are similar reports from participants in studies at other universities and facilities of the time. While it seems likely that the McBride study was traumatic to some of the individuals involved, it must be remembered that participation in the study was voluntary, each participant had a clear explanation beforehand what the study would entail, and participants could leave the study at any time they wanted. Indeed, three of the seventeen participants in the study did not remain to its completion. These points are not mentioned to minimize the experiences of these participants in any manner; they are only made so that the professional and ethical context of the study can be properly evaluated.
It is also important to note that aversion therapy as a treatment for homosexuality was not a major element of BYU research. In the APA task force report, BYU's contribution to the field of aversion therapy was not covered. This is probably because BYU's involvement was too minor to include. Other universities had more participants and many conducted their studies later than BYU.
McBride's thesis thoroughly describes the methods used to induce aversion. He did not use vomiting. This fact is verified in the interview with Dr. Thorne, available as the FAIR podcast referenced above, as well as by a specific statement to this effect from BYU:
Most of the accusations of using induced vomiting come from: 1) a person who admits that he never underwent therapy and 2) from the "documentary" 8: The Mormon Proposition (which contains several false accusations as detailed here). These two accounts are not consistent with each other. In short, there is no reliable documentation of the use of induced vomiting at BYU.
Aversion therapy was completely voluntary at BYU. Participants could enter and leave as they wish. In an interview with FAIR, Dr. Thorne explained that the voluntary nature was essential to get scientific results. He said any type of pressure for the participants to give certain answers would jade the results of the study. For this reason, they would not have accepted referrals from the Honor Code office even if they had been given. There was also a strict separation between what they did and what the honor code office knew about so as to remove any possibility of "pretending" to have certain results to please the honor code office. As reported in the thesis, participants could drop out at any time for whatever reason, as evidenced by the fact that some did.
The Church has never conducted aversion therapy. It doesn't conduct psychological therapy of any type. The LDS Church is a church, not a medical institution. People who happen to be LDS or go to BYU do a great variety of things. The Church does not take responsibility for everything done by a Mormon or for everything done by someone at BYU (not everyone at BYU is a Mormon).
In this particular case, a graduate student and his faculty mentor at Brigham Young University conducted a clinical study in the use of aversion therapy to treat ego-dystonic homosexuality. Ego-dystonic homosexuality is a condition where an individual's same-sex attraction is in conflict with his idealized self-image, creating anxiety and a desire to change. At the time, the American Psychiatric Society considered ego-dystonic homosexuality to be a mental illness, and aversion therapy was one of the standard treatments. Experiments were only run on those who had expressed a desire for the therapy, and all of the subjects indicated they had improved as a result of the therapy. The experiments adhered to the professional standards of the time. As stated in the paper that reported the results of this research, the research was never endorsed by BYU.
LDS Church leadership does not dictate nor oversee the details of scientific research at Brigham Young University. Like many universities, there are many different research projects going on with many different views on many different subjects. The Church is not responsible for every view held by one of its researchers. The church itself has never recommended aversion therapy.
The church has posted on its website an interview with the following quote:
President Kimball once cited reputable medical sources indicating that the practice of homosexuality could be abandoned through treatments, but he did not specify any treatments by name. The point President Kimball wanted to make, and that the church still makes, is that sexual actions can and must be controlled.
The church does not direct or oversee scientific research at BYU and does not mandate what experiments are to be done or not to be done. At BYU, as at other universities, students and professors have a variety of opinions and approaches and have significant freedom to pursue their own academic interests.
As an example, retired BYU professor William Bradshaw has presented biological evidence supporting his view that homosexuality is not an acquired tendency and lifestyle.[2] Bradshaw is free to share this view at BYU even though the church does not have a particular position on the causes of same-sex attraction and certainly believes that the lifestyles we follow represent a choice.
In the 1970's, there were a variety of opinions about how to treat mental disorders. Some professors and students were partial to the behaviorist movement to treat mental illnesses while others focused on verbal therapy. Today, the APA recommends cognitive therapies to help people who feel distress about their sexual orientation, but, in the 1970s, it was unclear which approach was best. If a professor or a graduate student favored one approach over another, it was because they favored that approach, not because it was mandated by the LDS Church.
The fact is that every member of the BYU community is free to espouse his or her own theories. As long as they remain in line with standards published by the professional societies and with the school’s academic freedom policy, all are free to pursue their own line of thinking. Actually, this situation is one of the requirements for university accreditation, and BYU is an accredited university.
It should also be remembered that, contrary to the popular caricature of the church, Latter-Day Saints are encouraged to think for themselves and find their own answers to questions, without coercion from church leadership. Doctrine and Covenants 58:26 reads:
And it was Joseph Smith himself who famously said:
Aversion therapy is still used today for a variety of treatments, such as gambling, smoking, alcoholism, and violence. A 2010 article in Psychology Today states "To date, aversion therapy using shock and nausea is the only technique of quitting [smoking] that offers decent gambling odds." [3] The Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders has this entry for aversion therapy:
Over the years, the methods have been refined and approved. Today, we have decades of research that were not available in the 1970s, giving us a better understanding of where aversion therapy would be effective and where it would not be effective. The methods of the 1970s may seem crude compared to today's standards, but today's standards will probably seem crude in another 40 years. Forms of aversion therapy are still used today by mainstream psychologists to treat a variety of conditions.
Homosexuality was once illegal in many countries, and those convicted were forced into various therapies against their wills.[5]
In 1966, Martin E.P. Seligman conducted a study at the University of Pennsylvania which showed positive results in applying aversion therapy to help people stop engaging in homosexual behavior. According to Seligman, this led to "a great burst of enthusiasm about changing homosexuality [that] swept over the therapeutic community." [6] Research was conducted by researchers at many institutions, including universities like Harvard and King's College in London.
Historically, there were two types of homosexuality that were treated, ego-dystonic homosexuality and ego-syntonic homosexuality. Ego-dystonic homosexuality is a condition where an individual's same-sex attraction is in conflict with his idealized self-image, creating anxiety and a desire to change. Ego-syntonic homosexuality describes a situation where the subject is content with his or her sexual orientation. Ego-dystonic homosexuality was considered a mental illness by the American Psychological Association (APA) until 1987, and an ego-dystonic sexual orientation is still considered a mental illness by the World Health Organization (F66.1). [7]
Even after the APA declassified ego-dystonic homosexuality as mental illness, aversion therapy could still be used to treat distress over sexual orientation, though not the sexual orientation itself. Persistent and marked distress about sexual orientation is still classified as a sexual disorder in the DSM-IV under Sexual Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (302.9). It was not until 1994, that the American Medical Association issued a report that stated "aversion therapy is no longer recommended for gay men and lesbians" [8] and it was not until 2006 that using aversion therapy to treat homosexuality became a violation of the codes of conduct and professional guidelines of the American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association.
In 2009, a task force was commissioned by the American Psychological Association to investigate therapies used to treat homosexuality, including aversion therapy. They reported:
Ego-syntonic homosexuality was not addressed in the BYU studies, though it was a subject of research performed at other institutions. Furthermore, BYU only treated adults. Other institutions, such as UCLA, treated children as young as 6.[10]
A significant number of hospitals and universities historically offered aversion therapy as a way to treat homosexuality. It would be impossible to list all of them, but here are a few of the major places where people were involved in research using aversion therapy to treat homosexuality:
Author | Year | Number | Institution | Type | Publication | References and Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Max |
1935 |
? |
New York University |
Aversion therapy |
Psychological bulletin |
|
Freund |
1960 |
67 |
University of Toronto |
Aversion apomorphine therapy |
Adult sexual interest in children |
|
James |
1962 |
1 |
Glenside Hospital (Bristol, U.K.) |
Aversion apomorphine therapy |
British Medical Journal |
|
Miller |
1963 |
4 |
Howard University |
Hypnotic-Aversion |
Journal of the National Medical Association |
|
Thorpe, Schmidt, Brown, Castell |
1964 |
- |
Banstead Hospital |
Imaginary aversive therapy |
Behavior Research Therapy |
|
Golda, Neufelda |
1964 |
39 |
Guy's Hospital |
Imaginary aversive therapy |
Behavior Research Therapy |
|
McGuire, Vallance |
1965 |
39 |
Southern General Hospital |
Aversive shock therapy |
British Medical Journal |
|
MacCulloch, Pinschof & Feldman |
1965 |
4 |
Crumpsall Hospital, Manchester, UK |
Anticipatory avoidance with aversion shock therapy |
Behavior Research and Therapy |
|
Solyom & Miller |
1965 |
6 |
Allan Memorial Institute |
Aversion shock therapy |
Behavior Research and Therapy |
|
MacCulloch & Feldman |
1967 |
43 |
Crumpsall Hospital (Manchester, U.K.) |
Anticipatory avoidance with aversion shock therapy |
British Medical Journal |
|
Bancroft & Marks |
1968 |
- |
Institute of Psychiatry and Maudsley Hospital |
Electric aversion therapy |
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine |
|
Fookes |
1969 |
27 |
? |
aversion shock therapy |
British Journal of Psychiatry |
|
Bancroft |
1969 |
16 |
? |
aversive shock therapy |
The British Journal of Psychiatry |
|
McConaghy |
1969 |
40 |
The University of New South Wales |
aversion apomorphine therapy |
The British Journal of Psychiatry |
|
Barlow |
1973 |
- |
The University of Mississippi |
Variety |
Behavior Therapy |
|
Birk, Huddleston, Miller, & Cohler |
1971 |
18 |
Joint project from Harvard and University of Chicago |
Aversive shock therapy vs. associative conditioning |
Archives of General Psychiatry |
|
Feldman, MacCulloch, & Orford |
1971 |
63 |
Crumpsall Hospital |
Aversive therapy |
- |
|
Colson |
1972 |
1 |
Illinois State University |
Olfactory aversion therapy |
Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry |
|
Segal & Sims |
1972 |
1 |
Murray State University |
Covert Sensitization |
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology |
|
Hallam & Rachman |
1972 |
7 |
King's College, London |
aversion shock therapy |
Behaviour Research and Therapy |
|
Hanson & Adesso |
1972 |
1 |
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee |
Desensitization and aversive counter-conditioning |
Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry |
|
McConaghy, Proctor, & Barr |
1972 |
40 |
Prince Henry Hospital (Sydney, Australia) |
Apomorphine aversion conditioning |
Archives of Sexual Behavior |
|
Callahan & Leitenberg |
1973 |
23 |
Carmarillo State Hosp., California |
aversion shock therapy |
The Journal of Abnormal Psychology |
|
McConaghy & Barr |
1973 |
46 |
University of New South Wales, Institute of Psychiatry of New South Wales |
Classical conditioning, avoidance conditioning |
The British Journal of Psychiatry |
|
Tanner |
1974 |
16 |
Center for Behavior Change |
aversion shock therapy |
Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry |
|
McConaghy |
1975 |
31 |
University of New South Wales |
Aversion shock therapy |
Behaviour Research and Therapy |
|
Tanner |
1975 |
16 |
Northeast Guidance Center |
Aversion shock therapy |
Behavior Therapy |
|
Freeman & Meyer |
1975 |
9 |
University of Louisville |
Aversion shock therapy |
Behavior Therapy |
|
McConaghy |
1976 |
157 |
University of New South Wales |
Aversion apomorphine therapy |
The British Journal of Psychiatry |
|
James |
1978 |
40 |
Hollymoor Hospital, England |
Anticipatory avoidance, desensitization, hypnosis, anticipatory avoidance |
Behavior Therapy |
|
McConaghy, Armstrong, & Blaszczynski |
1981 |
20 |
University of New South Wales |
Aversive therapy |
Behavior Research and Therapy |
|
The purpose of therapy is to help patients towards their desired goals. One of the fundamentals in the field is patient self-determination. It is the patient who sets the goals, not the therapist. Aversion therapy, which is still administered today to help smokers, is not administered as a way to torture the subjects for smoking, but to help them achieve their goal of being smoke-free. Similarly, the therapy at BYU was administered to people who felt distress about their sexual lives. The purpose of the therapy was to relieve that stress. The volunteers for the study sought help to change their homosexuality and medical associations of that time recommended this therapy as just one among several.
An analysis of similar aversion therapy studies indicate that they may have caused or exacerbated distress and poor mental health, especially depression and suicidal thoughts. (For more information on suicides, see Same-sex attraction/Suicide.) Whether or not these effects were experienced by the participants at the studies run at BYU could not be determined. There is an inherent risk in therapy for mental illnesses. As with many experiments, the risks were not fully understood at the time they were being run.
== Notes ==
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