Page "Conversion therapy" Paragraph 34

The homosexuality as sickness theory started to come under criticism in the 1950s.

Evelyn Hooker in 1957 published “ The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual ”, which found that " homosexuals were not inherently abnormal and that there was no difference between homosexual and heterosexual men in terms of pathology.

" This paper subsequently became influential.

Irving Bieber and his colleagues in 1962 published Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals, which concluded that " although this change may be more easily accomplished by some than by others, in our judgment a heterosexual shift is a possibility for all homosexuals who are strongly motivated to change.

" The same year, Albert Ellis published Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy, which claimed that " fixed homosexuals in our society are almost invariably neurotic or psychotic :... therefore, no so-called normal group of homosexuals is to be found anywhere.

" Ellis published his main work on homosexuality, Homosexuality: Its Causes and Cure, in 1965.