IM YOUR HANDYMAN - A HISTORY OF REPARATIVE THERAPIES

Reparative therapy has come to generically define talking cures that c laim to change an individual's homosexual orientation to a heterosexua l one. Although other treatment modalities have also promised to ''cur e'' homosexuality, the history of reparative therapies has become inex orably linked with that of psychoanalysis. This paper reviews the hist ory and theoretical assumptions of psychoanalytically-oriented practit ioners, beginning with Freud's juvenilization of gay people to the lat er analysts who pathologized and attempted to change same-sex attracti ons. The evolution of reparative therapists from medically concerned p ractitioners into antigay political activists is also discussed. The e volution of one branch of psychoanalytic theory into an antihomosexual political movement illustrates the permeability of boundaries between clinical issues and political ones. In their open support of antigay legislation, reparative therapists have moved from the traditional psy choanalytic center and have been embraced by conservative religious an d political forces opposed to homosexuality. In doing so, they have ap parently adopted religious organizational practices themselves, preach ing dogma and stifling dissent. The increasing marginalization of repa rative therapists from the psychoanalytic mainstream illustrates how p sychoanalysis per se is neither gay-affirming nor condemning, although psychoanalytic practitioners may fall into either of these categories .