Straight Talk

Schroeder: That's right. Everyone is focusing on whether there were successes, but what we thought was more important were the overwhelming number of those who experienced failure and reported a broad range of harm. [Some were] provided fraudulent information that gay people are all sick, can't live happy lives and were victims of child abuse. Some said that their therapists even tried to convince them that they must have been abused. Some therapists blamed the parents.... There were also many people who invested a lot of time-10, 15 years-in this therapy and really worked hard at it, and they expressed an inordinate sense of loss when it didn't work, and they had to begin to rebuild who they were socially.

Shidlo: The other thing was that those who failed weren't counseled about how to cope with it. They felt stuck with something that they had been indoctrinated to hate and had been told was the key to solving all their problems.

Did you find these subjects needed therapy for their therapy?

Shidlo: A lot of them were very hurt by it and required therapy to come to terms with their failure, who they were and the impact of their future and self-esteem. Many said they had a hard time forming relationships and suffered a lot of sexual dysfunction.... Another group felt very suspicious of all therapists. They felt deceived and betrayed. And a third group seemed to be psychologically resilient; their view was that the therapy had been a positive thing because it had helped them come to terms with the fact that they couldn't change, and this was who they truly were, and that it was time to stop fighting with themselves inside.

Any surprises in the results?

Schroeder: Yes, we asked whether they had withheld any information from their therapists, and it was not uncommon for them to say that they had lied to their therapists to please them. Shidlo: Many said the only way to quit was to pretend that they had succeeded. That explains why some surveys have shown that these therapists have a very high success rate. Schroeder: We also had students at religious universities tell us that they had been mandated into therapy as a requirement of completing their education or continuing to receive financial aid. Some of them said they had to mislead their therapist in order to graduate or get their checks. This was especially true at Mormon institutions.