---
title: "Conversion therapy"
chunk: 3/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:09.241296+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Aversion therapy used on homosexuals and bisexuals included electric shock and nausea-inducing drugs during presentation of same-sex erotic images. Cessation of the aversive stimuli was typically accompanied by the presentation of opposite-sex erotic images, with the objective of strengthening heterosexual feelings. Another method used is the covert sensitization method, which involves instructing recipients to imagine vomiting or receiving electric shocks. Proponents often write that only single-case studies have been conducted to support their methods and that their results cannot be generalized. For example, Haldeman writes that behavioral conditioning studies tend to decrease homosexual feelings but do not increase heterosexual feelings, citing Rangaswami's "Difficulties in arousing and increasing heterosexual responsiveness in a homosexual: A case report", published in 1982, as typical in this respect. Other methods of aversion therapy, in addition to electric shock, included ice baths, freezing, burning via metal coils, and hard labor. The intent was for the subject to associate homosexual feelings with pain and thus result in them being reduced. These methods have been concluded to be ineffective.
Aversion therapy was developed in Czechoslovakia between 1950 and 1962 and in the British Commonwealth from 1961 into the mid-1970s. In the context of the Cold War, Western psychologists ignored the poor results of their Czechoslovak counterparts who had concluded that aversion therapy was not effective by 1961 and recommended decriminalization of homosexuality instead. Some men in the United Kingdom were offered the choice between prison and undergoing aversion therapy. It was also offered to a few British women, but was never the standard treatment for either homosexual men or women.
In the 1970s, behaviorist Hans Eysenck was one of the main advocates of counterconditioning with malaise-inducing drugs and electric shock for homosexuals. He wrote that this therapy was successful in nearly 50% of cases. However, his studies were disputed. Behavior therapists, including Eysenck, used aversive methods. This led to a protest against Eysenck by gay activist Peter Tatchell at a London Medical Group Symposium in 1972. Tatchell said that the therapy promoted by Eysenck was a form of torture. Tatchell denounced Eysenck's form of behavioral therapy as causing depression and suicidal ideation and completion among gay men who were subjected to it.

=== Brain surgery ===
In the 1940s and 1950s, American neurologist Walter Jackson Freeman II popularized the so-called ice-pick lobotomy as a treatment for homosexuality. He personally performed more than 3,000 lobotomies across 23 US states, of which 2,500 used his transorbital method, despite the fact that he had no formal surgical training. Freeman was banned from performing psychosurgery in 1967.
In West Germany, a type of brain surgery usually involving destruction of the ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus was done on some homosexual men during the 1960s and 1970s. The practice was criticized by sexologist Volkmar Sigusch.

=== Castration and transplantation ===

In early twentieth-century Germany, experiments were carried out in which homosexual men were subjected to unilateral orchiectomy and testicles of heterosexual men were transplanted. These operations were a complete failure.
Surgical castration of homosexual men was widespread in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. SS leader Heinrich Himmler ordered homosexual men to be sent to concentration camps because he did not consider a time-limited prison sentence sufficient to eliminate homosexuality. Although theoretically voluntary, some homosexuals were subject to severe pressure and coercion to agree to castration. There was no lower age limit: some boys as young as 16 were castrated. Those who agreed to castration after a Paragraph 175 conviction were exempted from being transferred to a concentration camp after completing their legal sentence. Some concentration camp prisoners were also subjected to castration. An estimated 400 to 800 men were castrated. Endocrinologist Carl Vaernet attempted to change homosexual concentration camp prisoners' sexual orientations by implanting a pellet that released testosterone. Most of the victims, non-consenting prisoners at the Buchenwald concentration camp, died shortly thereafter.
An unknown number of men were castrated in West Germany, and chemical castration was used in other Western countries, notably against Alan Turing in the United Kingdom.

=== Ex-gay/ex-trans ministries ===

Ex-gay ministries are religious groups that attempt to use religion to eliminate or change queer individuals' sexual orientation. The ex-gay umbrella organization Exodus International in the United States ceased activities in June 2013, and the three-member board issued a statement repudiating its aims and apologizing for the harm its pursuit had caused to queer people. Ex-trans organizations often overlap with ex-gay organizations, frequently portraying trans identity as inherently sinful or against God's design and pathologizing gender variance as the result of trauma, social contagion, or "gender ideology".

=== Hypnosis ===
Hypnosis has been used in conversion therapy since the 19th century, first employed by Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Albert von Schrenck-Notzing. In 1967, Canadian psychiatrist Peter Roper published a case study of treating 15 homosexual individuals—some of whom would probably be considered bisexual by modern standards—with hypnosis. Allegedly, eight showed "marked improvement" (they reportedly lost sexual attraction towards the same sex altogether), four showed mild improvements (decrease of "homosexual tendencies"), and three exhibited no improvement after hypnotic treatment. He concluded that "hypnosis may well produce more satisfactory results than those obtainable by other means", depending on the hypnotic susceptibility of the subjects.

=== Psychoanalysis ===