A leading psychiatrist whose controversial study backed therapies to make gay people straight has admitted it was flawed and apologised to homosexuals for implying that they could be 鈥渃ured鈥�.
In 2003, Robert Spitzer, while at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, in Archives of Sexual Behavior concluding that 鈥渞eparative鈥� therapy 鈥� which can include aversive conditioning and spiritual intervention 鈥� could change sexual orientation. He reached this conclusion after interviews with 200 self-selected individuals who claimed to have become heterosexual after the therapy.
In published in the same journal this week, Spitzer speaks of the 鈥渇atal flaw鈥� in his study: the impossibility of telling whether his interviewees had genuinely changed sexual orientation.
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鈥淚 believe I owe the gay community an apology for my study making unproven claims of the efficacy of reparative therapy,鈥� he writes.
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