Today, in a letter to Dr. Ken Zucker obtained exclusively by Truth Wins Out, Dr. Robert Spitzer made an unprecedented apology to the gay community — and victims of reparative therapy in particular — for his infamous, now-repudiated 2001 study that claimed some “highly motivated” homosexuals could go from gay to straight:
Several months ago I told you that because of my revised view of my 2001 study of reparative therapy changing sexual orientation, I was considering writing something that would acknowledge that I now judged the major critiques of the study as largely correct. After discussing my revised view of the study with Gabriel Arana, a reporter for American Prospect, and with Malcolm Ritter, an Associated Press science writer, I decided that I had to make public my current thinking about the study. Here it is.
Basic Research Question. From the beginning it was: “can some version of reparative therapy enable individuals to change their sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual?” Realizing that the study design made it impossible to answer this question, I suggested that the study could be viewed as answering the question, “how do individuals undergoing reparative therapy describe changes in sexual orientation?” – a not very interesting question.
The Fatal Flaw in the Study – There was no way to judge the credibility of subject reports of change in sexual orientation. I offered several (unconvincing) reasons why it was reasonable to assume that the subject’s reports of change were credible and not self-deception or outright lying. But the simple fact is that there was no way to determine if the subject’s accounts of change were valid.
I believe I owe the gay community an apology for my study making unproven claims of the efficacy of reparative therapy. I also apologize to any gay person who wasted time and energy undergoing some form of reparative therapy because they believed that I had proven that reparative therapy works with some “highly motivated” individuals.
Robert Spitzer. M.D.
Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry,
Columbia University
Zucker, to whom Spitzer’s letter is addressed, is the editor of the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the journal in which Spitzer’s study was originally published in 2001. At that time, the study was a surprise that created a media firestorm which captured the nation’s attention. Dr. Spitzer was the last person in America one would have expected to produce a study bolstering the claims of ‘ex-gay’ activists — after all, he had previously led the charge in 1972-73 to remove homosexuality from the list of mental disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association. Earlier this month, Dr. Spitzer dealt “ex-gay” programs a fatal blow by officially renouncing his study in the American Prospect article he mentions in his letter above. That renunciation kicked out the final leg from the stool on which the proponents of ‘ex-gay’ therapy based their already shaky claims of success, or as Arana put it, removed from the ex-gay “fringe movement. . . its only shred of scientific support.”
Dr. Spitzer’s apology to the victims of “pray away the gay” therapy and the greater LGBT community marks a watershed moment in the fight against the “ex-gay” myth. We commend him for it, because not only will it solidify his legacy as a respected doctor and significant historical figure, but it will help to greatly hasten the day when the scourge that is reparative therapy is eradicated forever and LGBT people can live openly, honestly, and true to themselves.
This is FANTASTIC. I’ll be re-posting an excerpt of this later tonight. Awesome work, guys.
To quote Basil Fawlty in the British television comedy, Fawlty Towers, “Well, that looks pretty bloody final to me.”
It is a great pity that Dr Spitzer published this defective study during the final years of his brilliant career, but he isn’t the first great man to go over the top and do something foolish, and I’m sure that he won’t be the last. I’m reminded of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who published a book declaring his belief in fairies (the sort that live at the bottom of the garden) illustrated with obviously faked photographs which had been sent him of those creatures frolicking in the grass. Anyway, it is good that Dr Spitzer has now done the right thing both for himself and for the gay community. His honesty is to be commended. I’m sure that it will remove a burden from his mind in his years of retirement.
Robert Spitzer~ Out of Focus – Video
First partial recant by Spitzer in 2006 – Interviewed and filmed @ Robert Spitzer’s office @ Columbia University in NYC by Lisa Darden @ Hope Unlimited Productions for Truth Wins Out and the Documentary film project “For Such A Time As This” Very happy to hear that Spitzer is reiterating and making a very specific and direct recant at this time accompanied with an apology. Congratulations and may it be helpful to many struggling souls in the years to come.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwE6_dLweYo
This is big news! My question: It seems that all the studies of “ex-gays” have the same “fatal flaw” than Spitzer admits he made:
“The Fatal Flaw in the Study – There was no way to judge the credibility of subject reports of change in sexual orientation. I offered several (unconvincing) reasons why it was reasonable to assume that the subject’s reports of change were credible and not self-deception or outright lying. But the simple fact is that there was no way to determine if the subject’s accounts of change were valid.”
Doesn’t the Jones and Yarhouse study of Exodus participants have that very same flaw?
Tumescence exams would go a long way to fixing that flaw, but “ex-gays” for some reason are terried of taking one.
Now that’s a proper public apology.
All of the frauds in the “ex-gay” industry: please take note of this one for when you finally get around to writing yours.
Or would you really rather go to your graves in eternal disgrace?
It’s taken 11 years for this guy to admit what even a mediocre psychology undergraduate could see–that this “study” was nothing but propaganda serving the unscrupulous anti-gay mob of liars and fakes. How could anybody with a brain get taken in by those grifters? How did this clown ever acquire a reputation as a serious scholar? P T Barnum was right: there’s a sucker born every minute.
Michael Bussee, “Doesn’t the Jones and Yarhouse study of Exodus participants have that very same flaw?”
SGM- Yes I agree with you. BTW did you ever look at that website that Jones and Yarhouse set up for their study?
http://www.exgaystudy.org/
Oh and Yarhouse comments on the Spitzer rebuttal on his website
http://psychologyandchristianity.wordpress.com/
Thank you, Dr. Spitzer, for having the courage to tell the truth about your own misused research. This will help gay people and all pro-equality Americans. On the other hand, anti-gay proponents of the “ex-gay” myth will ignore it or explain it away. They will continue to push their quackery, because they love money and it’s an easy way to get lots of $$$ without much effort.
REVISIONIST HISTORY!
For those of us who were active in the struggle to depathologize homosexuality in the late 60s and early 70s, Bob Spitzer was NOT our hero. Many articles have been written about the GAY and LESBIAN psychiatrists and psychologists who were the true heroes of the effort to eradicate all pathological references homosexuality from the DSM. The process of educating and re-educating Bob Spitzer took years, and it has been well documented (see, for example, Bayer’s HOMOSEXUALITY AND AMERICAN PSYCHIATRY: THE POLITICS OF DIAGNOSIS, Basic Books, 1981; Rothblum’s LESBIANS IN ACADEMIA, Routledge, 1997). PLEASE CHECK THE FACTS AND GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE!
Nanette Gartrell, MD
Nice, but how about also apologizing to the families and loved ones of all the gay people who have committed suicide because the so-called “reparative” therapy he once endorsed didn’t “work”? Not to mention all the gay people who have been murdered, and their families and loved ones, because his past endorsement gave license to ignorant fools to engage in homicidal violence. His apology is a good start, but it doesn’t seem like he realizes quite how much blood is still on his hands.
With all due respect, an apology for Spitzer’s bogus 2001 study does NOTHING to “solidify his legacy as a respected doctor.” in my opinion.
1) You dont have to be a scientist, a Doctor, or a college grad to realize that his “study” was a sham from start to finish. No “respected doctor” would have carried out a study in the way he carried his 2001 study out (no control group, participants coming from a biased & questionable source, lack of willing participants & no way to objectively test the participants claims that they changed their sexual orientation etc.)
2) In the “My So Called Ex-Gay Life” article where he talked to Gabriel Arana–it is mentioned that the reason Spitzer decided to come forward and retract his “study” was because ‘he was afraid that the 2001 study would tarnish his legacy’– THAT IS APPALLING!!! This man is no more concerned with setting the record straight than any of the other charlatans he snuggled up to in the Ex-Gay Industry. He’s 80 years old and probably at deaths door and the only reason he’s attempting to make this right is because ‘HE’S AFRAID THE 2001 STUDY WOULD TARNISH HIS LEGACY’.
3) 11 Years have gone by since he conducted that study. ELEVEN years! You mean to tell me that it took this so called accomplished and respected doctor 11 years to realize his “study” was a total crock of s**t?
4) Spitzer mentioned somewhere in an article that I read that from a research standpoint, he was always drawn to ‘controversial subjects’. I think that alone speaks volumes. Because CONTROVERSY is how he made a name for himself in the medical field in the first place–And he used GAYS to do it. In my opinion, Spitzer probably did his 70′s research because he knew it’d create a stir (which it did). Then…in the new millennium, after all the news about AIDS broke in the 80′s and 90′s–Spitzer probably figured he’d use Gays as pawns again to get himself back in the news. And what better way than to produce a “scientific study” that “proved” gay people don’t have to live the gay lifestyle and can change if they are motivated enough to do so? Spitzer & his “ex-gay” croanies had scared parents all over the world begging their gay kids to “change” their sexual orientation, based on this bogus study. Once again…Spitzer found a way to get himself back in the spotlight.
5) Now it’s 2012. After realizing what a crackpot he looks like. With the “Ex-gay” industry taking it’s last dying breaths before it finally sputters out into extinction…NOW Spitzer wants to disassociate himself with his “study” and those on the fringe in an attempt to salvage his legacy.
Sorry Spitzer. This lesbian does NOT accept your self-serving apology made only to preserve your reputation. You’ve done too much damage. How many families did your study play a role in ruining after scared parents pleaded with their gay kids to “change” because they thought it was possible based on a “scientific study”. What about the rash of gay teen suicides that have happened recently over the past decade while Spitzer sat quietly by? How many kids have been bullied at school because their classmates believe that sexual orientation is something that can be changed and is a choice? How many “ex-gay” dropouts have been hurt after going through sham reparative therapy? How many anti-gay, discriminatory laws have been passed in part due to people thinking sexual orientation is a “choice” (based on your study).
Sometimes “sorry” just doesn’t cut it. Many homosexuals will forgive Spitzer. That’s up to them. They have bigger hearts than I do. This man was never anything more than a publicity w***e who used gays as his pawns to make himself famous. As for his efforts to have homosexuality removed from the DSM…he said himself, eventually, it would have been removed even if he was not the one to spearhead the movement. I feel nothing for this man but contempt. Enjoy your afterlife Spitzer. Wherever you end up, you’ll be going there with gay blood on your hands.
These studies always ignore the existance of bisexuality. The way it works is this. Say someone is 20% straight, 80% gay. Due to ignorance of bisexuality, or internalized biphobia, or lack of a bisexual community where they are, they identify as gay, since their attractions are mostly gay. Now their parents insist that they “pray away the gay,” or go for the cure, or what ever. They are pressured and shamed until they stop acting on the gay urges. However, they always were a little bit bi, and if the right woman comes along, they can function sexually with her (probably while fantasizing about men). So they HAVE NOT CHANGED AT ALL. They were always bisexual, and are still bisexual. They are just a gay-leaning bi guy who is only acting on his straight urges, and who has been shamed into identifying as straight. The numbers of the men who go through these camps who kill themselves is HUGE; being shamed for something we don’t chose is very damaging.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDiYeJ_bsQo
This heart-wrenching video shows ex-Exodus leaders admitting that they never changed ONE SINGLE person, and that they drove people to suicide, and apologizing. The studies keep piling up that prove that being gay, bisexual, and transgender is biological and we are born that way. All you can do is to make a gay person become celibate, and a bisexual person only act on their straight urges. I have seen a few videos of people claiming that they were “cured” by these camps, and are now with women, but again, I suspect they are bi people acting straight.
As good as this is, a Doctor of Psychiatry should have known better from the start that a highly motivated individual could deny their basic yearnings only at great detriment to their own mental health. He should leave the apology in a suicide note.
The fatal flaw is a two edge sword. Sexual orientation is such a subjective matter, there was no way to judge the credibility of subject reports of sexual orientation, after all.
For four decades, Robert Spitzer has played pivotal roles in mental health policies – not only on sexual orientation, but on gender diversity as well. This week, Spitzer conspicuously failed to retract a lifetime of trans psychopathologization, stereotyping gender identities and expression that differ from assigned birth roles as mental disease. This omission speaks to marginalization and scapegoating of trans and especially transsexual people by mental health policymakers. Just as disappointing, G/L movement leaders and progressive journalists have responded to this omission with silence and tacit approval.
Shifting stigma from one oppressed class to a more oppressed class is not real change.
See http://www.bilerico.com/2012/04/gender_diversity_scapegoating_erasure_in_medicine_1.php
Actually, michael, the jones and Yarhouse study itself admitted that it was highly flawed. The “change” described was difficult, complicated, to use their words. I know of no one whose sexuality is difficult and complicated unless they choose to make it so.
Estraven said “These studies always ignore the existance of bisexuality.”.
Yes, that fact always has me tearing out my hair. I agree wholeheartedly with everything you said.
[...] letter is also noteworthy because it contains an apology for the harm his study caused to victims of “pray away the gay” therapy and to the greater LGBT [...]
I’m sure all the gays that have been killed, and have killed themselves feel better. And I’m sure the kids that have been forced into reparative therapy and tortured feel better too.
I’m sorry, but self-reporting changes in sexual orientation should have never been scientifically valid. Did you know people lie? Did you know people can live in denial? WTF?
I don’t understand the legitimacy of his retraction. He is saying that the study is flawed because they could have all been lying. How are studies that rate change in depression done, change in alcoholism done, or change in domestic abuse performed and analyzed? They are done in the exact same way. You interview the client to establish that, first, there is a problem in the relationship, then you re-interview the client again to find out if they think that there is no longer a problem. What kind of objective standards could be used otherwise? This stuff is not like going to the hospital for a broken leg! Things that occur mentally have to do with thought and are expressed through speech and behavior. There is nothing wrong with the Spitzer study, just Mr. Spitzer thinks there is something wrong with his interpretation. Unfortunately, he seems not to be aware of how all other kinds of change research is done in large patient groups. This retraction makes him less of a scientist and more of a coward who bent due to discriminatory practices from ex-gay hate groups. And in this case, I’m really having trouble understanding how else “effectiveness” could be measured, ignoring the wife, the kids, the happiness; what objective standards are left to tell the therapist, “This person is not gay anymore”?
Joey, how about a measure of sexual attraction? Something that shows that the person isn’t simply pretending to be a heterosexual.
Joey:
I guess you are so smart you know better than the actual scientist who conducted the study. Whatever.
Because “ex-gay” is fraud by nature and study participants also work as “ex-gay” for pay hucksters by right wing political hack groups, their answers can’t be trusted. I have long urged that so-called “ex-gays” submit to polygraphs, No Lie
MRI’s and penile plethysmographs to physically test if they have actually changed.
Because “ex-gays” are full of it, they have repeatedly refused to submit to such physical measures. They would rather spin tales of change than actually prove it. Want to talk about cowards? Look no further than the so-called “ex-gays.”
Joey, let me know when they are ready to test. Until then, you are nothing more than a dishonest shill with an agenda.
Im glad you think we should put ex-gays on polygraph tests. Of course then we would have to re-evaluate all of psychological research with depression, bi-polar disorder, and other mental disorders and make sure all those patients were telling the truth right? The reason no one would think about doing such a thing is simply because political liberals have just as much of an agenda as of right wing fanatics. Homosexual studies are overly critised because some people just don’t want to change, they want to be “normal”.
I don’t really care either way…I am neither motivated by Christianity, being that I’m agnostic, nor motivated by gay activist groups who like to over-exaggerate and misrepresent a lot of research. I’m just saying that the reason for Mr. Spitzer’s retraction for the article is ridiculous. Look at the editors response when he first wanted to do it, “I said, ‘I’m not sure what you want to retract, Bob. You didn’t falsify the data. You didn’t commit egregious statistical errors in analyzing the data. You didn’t make up the data. There were various commentaries on your paper, some positive, some negative, some in between. So the only thing that you seem to want to retract is your interpretation of the data, and lots of people have already criticized you for interpretation, methodological issues, etc.’”…There is something very fishy about all this is all I’m saying.
Joey, who probably got all C’s in high school and then likely cheated on his Vo-Tech entrance exam, thinks he knows better than the scientific community, including the researcher who now sees the flaws in his own study and has the balls to admit it. Surely, we are all very impressed! Now, please, get back to pumping my gas, sir.
“So the only thing that you seem to want to retract is your interpretation of the data, and lots of people have already criticized you for interpretation, methodological issues, etc.”
And Spitzer wants it to be known that he now concurs with those criticisms. You can’t meaningfully retract an actual study, unless you are doing so on the grounds that it was based on fraudulent or erroneous data. But it does make sense to announce that you have decided that the study was indeed methodologically unsound, and that you now therefore retract the conclusions to which you previously came on the basis of it, in other words that you have ceased to believe that it demonstrates what you once maintained that it did. That is a perfectly reasonable thing for Spitzer to do.
[...] which Maddow discussed the implications of Dr. Robert Spitzer’s historic retraction of and apology for his infamous 2001 study that claimed certain “highly motivated” homosexuals could [...]
I have been arguing against Dr. Spitzer’s study for years. Spitzer keeps saying that there’s no way to know if people who claim to have changed their sexual orientation are being honest. But there is. That is why the plethysmograph was invented. Check out this (partial) article from Wikipedia, “The original volumetric was developed during the 1950s by Kurt Freund in then-Czechoslovakia. Freund later wrote, “In the early fifties homosexual interaction was still an indictable offense in Czechoslovakia. I was of course opposed to this measure, but I still thought, as did my colleagues at the psychiatric university hospital in Prague where I was working, that homosexuality was an experientially acquired neurosis” (p. 223)[6] He then developed phallometry to replace psychoanalytic methods of assessment because “[P]sychoanalysis had turned out to be a failure, virtually unusable as an instrument for individual diagnosis or research….When phallometry began to look promising as a test of erotic sex and age preferences, we started using it mainly as a test of pedophilia, that is determining who has an erotic preference for children over adults” (p. 223-224).
In post-World-War-II Czechoslovakia, Freund was assigned by the communist government the task of identifying among military conscripts men who were falsely declaring themselves to be gay.[7] “Freund (1957) developed the first device, which measured penile volume changes… to distinguish heterosexual and homosexual males for the Czechoslovakian army.” [8] When he escaped Europe for Canada, Freund was able to pursue his research using phallometry for the assessment of sexual offenders.[7] At that time, attempts to develop methods of changing homosexual men into heterosexual men were being made by many sexologists, including John Bancroft,[9] Albert Ellis,[10] and William Masters of the Masters and Johnson Institute.[11] Because phallometry showed that such methods were failures, Freund was among the first sexologists to declare that such attempts were unethical.[7][12]“
John, your quotation mentions John Bancroft. In his short paper about the Spitzer study (2003) Bancroft briefly mentions his own attempts in the 1960s to modify the sexual orientation of gay men and says, “My experiences fairly quickly led me to conclude that such interventions were ineffective.”
Similarly Kurt Freund himself claimed some success in the 1960s in changing the sexual orientation of gay men, “but the results were short-lived: by five years after the treatment all of the patients were experiencing homosexual feelings again, and 87 percent of them were engaged in homosexual behaviour.” (SIMON LEVAY, Queer Science,1996)
Anyone studying “ex-gays” has to take into account the mindset of many of the participants. The impact of “name-it-and-claim-it” theology on self-reports of “change” cannot be under-estimated.
It’s not so much that “ex-gays” deliberately lie. It’s more that they have a special way of looking at “belief”. Those from more charismatic backgrounds are told that “what they profess in faith” will come to pass – if their faith is strong enough.
For example, such a believer may say, “I have been healed by Jesus” of this or that affliction – even though they still suffer from it. By proclaiming it on a spritual level they help to bring it about on the physical level.
This idea of “claiming it on faith” is reinforced by such Biblical passages as “By His stripes we ARE healed” (past tense) and “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you HAVE received it, and it will be yours.”
When these believers say, “My sexual orientation HAS changed”, they may actually mean something closer to: “I strongly believe that my orientation has changed on the spiritual level and I am professing faith (confident hope) that it will also be true on the physical level.”
That’s what I meant when I said I was “ex-gay”. It was what John Smid meant. It’s what many of the men in our ministries meant. But these were self-reports of our hope – not a factual reality – believing (in faith) that what had changed on the spiritual level would manifest itself on the physical.
Honest minds can disagree, even with themselves.
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large — I contain multitudes.”
― Walt Whitman
[...] The author of a controversial 2001 study upon which the Prop. 8 Proponents based their claim has now denounced the study and written a heart-felt apology to the entire gay community: I believe I owe the gay community an apology for my study making [...]
HE SHOULD BE STRIPPED OF HIS TITLE!!
Everyone has the right to be whatever they want to be, including exgay. Stop the hate and violence against exgays!
Everyone has the right to be whatever they want to be. Including exgay. Stop the hate and violence against exgays!
MJ:
Wow, you are a sore loser.
MJ, there’s never been any violence by gays on “exgays”. The only time they’re hated is when they seek to oppress gays and deny them equal rights – if they stop being bullies they’ll be left alone.
And no “exgay” wants to suppress their sexuality for personal reasons, they unfortunately sacrifice their happiness to avoid the condemnation from people like you who tell them they’ll be eternally tortured for harmless acts of love.
I don’t hate “ex-gays” I just find them kind of silly and sad.
Gays are constantly spewing hate and violence everywhere now. They are increasingly bashing even those that love them. The evidence is everywhere, even here. Get your head out of the sand! Stop the hate.
No one has the right to determine if someone is happy or not. It is a personal decision and right. If someone is unhappy they have a choice; it is still a free country. Trying to infringe on the happiness of others is silly and sad.
So, MJ, are you saying that ex-gays are not straight? Do ex-gays exist is some kind of nether world then? I thought in your world view that are absolutely only two sexual orientations (well, one, since you don’t consider homosexual to be a “real” orientation).
Mj:
Please stop the “ex-gay” infringement on my happiness. Stop calling me sexually broken and perverse. Stop trying to pass laws to take away my rights. Stop insulting my family. You are doing everything in your power to infringe upon my happiness not the other way around.
It is LGBT people who fill the column of hate crime statistics. Not so called ex gays. That is delusion.
Wayne, two wrongs don’t make a right!
There are no laws to take away anything from gays. That is a delusion. Stop insulting our families.
MJ, “There are no laws to take away anything from gays.”
Are you an idiot?
What do you call laws that explicitely forbid any recognition of our families MJ?
[...] Robert Spitzer. M.D. Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University, U.S.A. 25 April 2012, cited: http://www.truthwinsout.org/news [...]
Obviously MJ is either ignorant or blindly biased. This is an irrational person who can’t be reasoned with. To say something so obviously untrue is just amazing.