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Thank you for your great poster. It is so intensive that I want to have another look at it later. I am wondering how long this form of therapy was used. When was it introduced and when was it abandoned? What was the legal and medical context of aversion therapy?
Dear Kate,
thank you for your very interesting presentation on this important topic! In your presentation you focus on the experiences of ‘patients’ during aversion therapy as well as their hopes and expectations for the future. On that basis I’m curious about their initial motives to seek treatment – social pressure, religious beliefs, doctoral referrals, maybe also court decisions in cases where homosexuality was considered a criminal offense? Maybe you can also outline further how and to what extent different motives influenced the individual experiences of therapeutic measures.
Hi Anna,
Yes!! You are exactly right – patient motivations to seek treatment in the first place *definitely* shaped their experiences of the treatment and its aftermath. In my PhD dissertation I devoted an entire chapter to this point, of which this video is just a short snippet. In my research, I found that there was no single pattern in patient motivations. If anything united them at all, it was the structural circumstances of same-sex desire and non-normative gender identity being either illegal or certainly socially proscribed. However this was not necessarily true for all. Some sought psychiatric or psychological assistance because they thought it might help them come to terms with their desires.
Dear Kaye,
I really enjoyed your presentation – the format is excellent! You write that aversion therapy was based on Pavlov’s theory of conditioned reflexes. Do you know if these sort of corrective therapies were in some forms used in the Soviet Union? I would be very curious to know more.
Asiya Bulatova
10.3.2021 12:55
Hi Asiya,
Thanks for this question! My knowledge of the Soviet Union primary source material is limited by language capabilities, however I have discussed my work with numerous historians of sexuality and psychiatry in the Soviet Union – to date, there are only a few studies addressing behaviourism in Soviet psychological medicine in the post-war period. The most significant study relating to sexuality so far is obviously the work of Dan Healey. There are several PhD students in the process of finalising their dissertations on related themes. There’s definitely a lot of room for research here!
Kate Davison
10.3.2021 16:05
I’ve read Healey and I don’t remember any references to aversion therapy. Perhaps, it’s because of the whole nature vs nature debate.
Asiya
10.3.2021 18:13