Post 67

Hello again.

The second most extensively used treatment approach for gay men was provided by Behaviorists. From reinforcement principles of learning, aversive counter-conditioning techniques were used to divert gays from becoming sexually aroused by representations of men’s phallus and robust, virile bodies. Painful electric shock was paired with homoerotic stimuli to weaken and abolish arousal while female pornography and sexual surrogates were used to increase appreciation for and sexual responsiveness to women.

Although behaviorists claimed to have cured gays, their approaches also failed. Gay men ceased subjecting themselves to these forms of torture as they came to know that the promised changes weren’t happening. Behaviorists had fallen in line behind Freudian analysts in believing that issues of adult sexuality, particularly fears and aversion to women’s genitalia, directed men’s erotic energies to those of their own sex.

Homosexuality is not primarily a matter of adult sexuality, but the outgrowth of mistaken responses to early trauma. As children, many of these boys were loners and did not experience the chumships that could have cemented within their oneness with others of their gender tribe. Role-estranged males seek symbolic intimacies as a bridge to the power and virility of masculinity they feel lacking in themselves. Solutions to their sense of being different lie largely in same-sex sociality with heterosexual men, not sexuality.