Ex-Gay Research: Analyzing the Spitzer Study and Its Relation to Science, Religion, Politics, and Culture

Defenders and critics of the controversial Spitzer study analyze its methodologies and findings

In 2001, Robert L. Spitzer, MD, presented his study on sexual conversion therapy with its controversial findings that some homosexuals can change their sexual orientation. The resulting media sensation and political firestorm enraged the study’s critics and emboldened its supporters. Ex-Gay Research: Analyzing the Spitzer Study and Its Relation to Science, Religion, Politics, and Culture presents leading experts examining Spitzer’s research methodology and findings to discern whether the study itself deserves deeper consideration or outright dismissal. Every facet of the study is reviewed to discuss the positive or negative aspects of the results, its significance in political and social terms, and the implications for the future.

Dr. Spitzer himself was an instrumental figure in the American Psychiatric Association's decision in 1973 to remove homosexuality as a mental illness listing from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-III. His later study that states that in some individuals, homosexuality may be more fluid than previously thought stirred controversy in the psychiatric community and society at large. His study is presented here to allow the reader to evaluate and consider it for themselves. Leading experts then voice their own pro or con views on the methodology and findings. Ex-Gay Research: Analyzing the Spitzer Study and Its Relation to Science, Religion, Politics, and Culture fearlessly illustrates the sometimes fuzzy boundary between science and politics, courageously spotlighting the culture wars now dividing our society.

Ex-Gay Research: Analyzing the Spitzer Study and Its Relation to Science, Religion, Politics, and Culture discusses:

• the ex-gay movement
  
• the nature of scientific inquiry
  
• the relationship between science and politics
  
• the results of sexual conversion therapies
  
• gay and lesbian rights
  
  

Ex-Gay Research: Analyzing the Spitzer Study and Its Relation to Science, Religion, Politics, and Culture is essential reading for sex researchers, mental health professionals, pastoral counselors, political activists, and any person asking if one can truly change his or her homosexuality.

Jack Drescher, MD, is a fellow and a training and supervising analyst at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology and a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at SUNY-Downstate. A distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, he chairs the APA’s Committee on Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Issues. Dr. Drescher is a founding member of the Committee on Sexual Minorities of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP) and former chair of its Committee on Human Sexuality. He is author of Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man (1998, The Analytic Press), co-editor, with Ariel Shidlo and Michael Schroeder, of Sexual Conversion Therapy: Ethical, Clinical, and Research Perspectives (2001, The Haworth Medical Press), and edits The Analytic Press’s Bending Psychoanalysis book series. Dr. Drescher is in full-time private practice in New York City. Kenneth J. Zucker, PhD, is professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He is the head of the Gender Identity Service in the Child, Youth, and Family Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. He has served on the DSM-III-R, DSM-IV, and DSM-IV-TR Subcommittees on Gender Identity Dis[1]orders. He co-authored with Susan J. Bradley Gender Identity Disor[1]der and Psychosexual Problems in Children and Adolescents (Guil[1]ford Press, 1995). Since 2002, he has been the editor of Archives of Sexual Behavior and is currently president-elect of the International Academy of Sex Research.