Box Turtle Bulletin

The Daily Agenda for Monday, February 16

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From the International Gay Rodeo Association program, 1989, page 8.

THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
► Aversion Therapy for “Sexual Deviation”: 1973. Attempts to cure homosexuality have taken many forms, many of them cruel. Perhaps the cruelest might be the use of electric shock aversion therapy. This method was first described in the academic literature in 1935, and reports of its continued use persisted through the 1970’s and even later. Two of sixteen participants at a Brigham Young University program committed suicide in the mid-1970’s, and there are similar reports of suicide and long-term psychological and physical damage elsewhere.

There are literally hundreds of reports of various forms of aversion therapy in the literature between 1935 and 1980. In 1973, one such report appeared in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology by two researchers from the University of Vermont. Dr. Harold Leitenberg and Ph.D candidate Edward J. Callahan wrote an article titled, “Aversion therapy for sexual deviation: Contingent shock and covert sensitization“, in which they described their experiments on six subjects:

Six subjects were selected from a group of 23 referrals during a 2-year period. Selection was made on the grounds of desire to undergo aversion therapy and the consistent occurrence of measurable erection during presentation of slides depicting their deviant form of arousal. Seven referrals decided agains treatment (two of these were court referred), two subjects dropped out during the first phase…

Treatment Procedures
Contingent shock: …Shock levels varying from “pain” to “tolerance” were then randomly selected for administration as part of a punishment procedure which made shock contingent upon erection. These shock levels ordinarily ranged from .5 milliampere to 4.5 milliampere, and shock duration was varied randomly from .1 second to .5 second. Erection was monitored by a penile strain gate. Five slides of deviant material and two heterosexually oriented slides were presented for 125 seconds apiece in each session while the subject was instructed to imaging whatever was sexually arousing with the person on the slide. An attempt was made to obtain slides appropriate to each person’s idiosyncratic sexual arousal. If during the “deviant” material slide, the penile circumference increase exceeded a level of 15% of full erection, shock was administered through electrodes on the first and third fingers on the subject’s right hand.

Covert Sensitization: This technique involves the presentation of verbal descriptions of “deviant” acts and the description of aversive consequences, such as nausea, vomiting, discovery by family, etc. … For example, a man might be asked to imagine going to the apartment of a homosexual contact, approaching the man’s bedroom, initiating sexual activity, feeling increasingly nauseous, and finally vomiting on the contact, on the sheets, and all over himself. A variation of this scene might involve the patient finding the homosexual contact rotting with syphilitic sores, or finding that the contact had diarrhea during the sexual encounter.

The subjects included two pedophiles and a young man arrested for indecent exposure. The other three were:

Subject 2
The patient was a 38-year-old depressed married man with a 13-year history of active homosexuality and depression. The patient sought behavioral treatment after 4 years of psychiatric counseling which had not alleviated either problem. He continued psychiatric counseling for the depression, with the stipulation that no sexual matters be discussed. His homosexual activity consisted of seeking. His homosexual activity consisted of seeking contacts 2-3 times a week, usually without success. …He sought treatment to reduce homosexual urges since he felt they led to frustration, depression, and an inability to concentrate on work.

The patient was a 38-year-old depressed married man with a 13-year history of active homosexuality and depression. The patient sought behavioral treatment after 4 years of psychiatric counseling which had not alleviated either problem. He continued psychiatric counseling for the depression, with the stipulation that no sexual matters be discussed. His homosexual activity consisted of seeking. His homosexual activity consisted of seeking contacts 2-3 times a week, usually without success. …He sought treatment to reduce homosexual urges since he felt they led to frustration, depression, and an inability to concentrate on work.

…The subject’s only homosexual contact during treatment occurred during a 2-week break in treatment in this phase. The patient reported an inability to reach climax during this contact. During a later talk to a former contact, the patient felt the symptoms of impending vomiting and left the situation. He later connected this feeling with experiences felt during treatment.

…

Subject 4
This was a 19-year-old homosexual with no prior sexual or dating experience with girls. … Sexual contacts [with other men] led to guilt feelings and vacillation over whether he wanted to learn to accept homosexuality or to change his pattern of sexual arousal. After discussing his dilemma with a few friends and relatives, he decided to seek treatment.

Phase 1: Contingent shock was administered for 10 sessions. Penile circumference changes were reduced during slides of males and females initially; however, this suppression during slides of females was only transient. There was an increase in average daily homosexual urges to slightly more than two per day and a slight increase in frequency of daily homosexual masturbation, while homosexual fantasies were slightly decreased. The patient was somewhat disturbed by the experience of shock, but was willing to undergo it in order to change his sexual arousal pattern. He had one homosexual contact late in this phase.

Phase 2: Covert sensitization was administered for seven sessions. Penile circumference changes to slides of men reduced greatly, and penile circumference changes to slides of women continued to increase. Rapid progress was reported by the subject in this phase. … After seven sessions, the subject reported he was progressing more quickly than he could stand “physically.” He felt his progress was strong enough to drop treatment and continue to make adjustment alone. After 3 months, however, he returned to treatment because of “unwanted” homosexual contact which unnerved him about the stability of his progress.

… An attempt was made to return the subject to contingent shock treatment. The subject became very upset by this and misapplied the electrodes during the first scheduled shock session in order to reduce the shock. At the next session, he explained that the felt shock had not helped him and that he did not want to go through the painful experience since he felt it had not therapeutic effect. At this stage, he said he would have to quit treatment rather than go through contingent shock again.

…

Subject 5
The patient was a 29-year-old married man referred after being apprehended by police while walking along a main street in women’s clothing. This was his first police contact in 17 years of cross-dressing, and no charges were pressed. His treatment was voluntary; his reported reason for wanting therapy was the desire to feel sexually “normal.” Although married, the patient reported intercourse occurred only twice a year.

…Treatment consisted of one phase of contingent shock and one phase of covert sensitization. There was rapid and substantial suppression of erection to transsexual fantasies during the first phase. (Note that measurement was taken without the shock electrodes attached.) Intercourse was reported to increase to once a week, although independent confirmation with his wife was impossible since the patient claimed that his wife was unaware of his transvestism, and he did not wish us to contact her. …

Calahan and Lienteberg concluded that ” both treatments combined led to a favorable outcome,” despite acknowledging the difficulty of independent verification.

By the time this paper appeared in The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Callahan had already moved on to UCLA, where he became a Behavioral Modification supervisor for the Neorpsychiatric Institute, where five-year-old Kirk Murphy was treated by future anti-gay activist George Rekers for what was identified as Kirk’s “Gender Identity Disorder.” (There is no evidence that Callahan was involved with Kirk’s treatment.) He is currently at UC Davis. Leitenberg, who had founded the University of Vermint’s Behavior Therapy and Psychotherapy Center in 1972, served as its director until his retirement in 2001.

[Source: Callahan, Edward J.; Leitenberg, Harold. “Aversion therapy for sexual deviation: Contingent shock and covert sensitization.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 81, no. 1 (February 1973): 60-73. Abstract available here.]

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
► Katharine Cornell: 1893-1974. She shared the title of “The First Lady of the Theatre” with Helen Hayes; as good friends and colleagues, they each deferred the title to each other. While Hayes is probably more well known today, Cornell’s own acting and contributions to the theater are legendary. Part of her success can be attributed to her collaboration with her husband, Guthrie McClintic, a successful director and producer. Their marriage was both professional and one of convenience: Cornell was lesbian and McClintic was gay. She was a member of New York’s “sewing circles, with relationships with Tallulah Bankhead and Mercedes de Acosta, among others. Meanwhile, McClinctic directed Cornell in every play since their marriage.

Cornell’s acclaimed Broadway roles include the title character of George Bernard Shaw’s Candide, Countess Ellen Olenska in The Age of Innocence, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in The Barretts of Wimpole Street — and that’s just before the Great Depression. Her career continued unabated through the 1950s. Her appearance in the title role of 1936’s St. Joan won her a bevy of honorary degrees from several colleges and universities, and she won a Tony Award for Best Actress for Antony and Cleopatra in 1947. After McClintic died in 1961, Cornell decided to retire rather than work with another director. She restored the 300-year-old Association Hall on Martha’s Vineyard, which was later rename the Katharine Cornell Theater. She died of pneumonia in 1974, and was buried next to the theater named in her honor.

► John Schlesinger: 1926-2003. The British director of film, stage, television and opera became one of the more influential figures in Britain’s post-war entertainment industry. He began acting in a small number of small parts in films shortly after leaving Oxford. In the mid-fifties, he began directing short documentaries for the BBC. His first feature film came in 1961 with Terminus, a documentary set on a London train station. It earned him a Venice Film Festival Gold Lion a British Academy Award. He then set about making fictional feature films beginning with the award-winning A Kind of Loving (1962), which was the sixth most popular movie in Britain that year. A string of films followed, many of which were set in “swinging London” of the 1960s, and which established Schlesinger as an influential part of the British New Wave.

His first American film, 1969’s Midnight Cowboy, starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, became the first and only X-rated film to win an Oscar. It actually won three: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. By today’s standards, the film is much less daring than its x-rating would suggest. The rating came from the story line in which Joe Buck (Voight), a Texas transplant, becomes a hustler soon after arriving in New York. He also begins a relationship of sorts with a con man by the name of “Ratso” Rizzo (Hoffman). MPAA pointed to the film’s “homosexual frame of reference” and its “possible influence upon youngsters” in giving it an X-rating. (It has been reclassified as an “R” with no edits to the original film.) In 1994, Midnight Cowboy was designated as “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation by the U.S. National Film Registry. In 1970, Schlesinger was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

Schlesinger went on to make a string of films, some portraying the underbelly of society, others focusing on unusual and often flawed characters, including Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), The Day of the Locust (1975), Marathon Man (1976), Yanks (1979), The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), Pacific Heights (1990). In 1999’s The Next Best Thing, he paired Madonna and Rupert Everett for a one-night stand between a gay man and a straight woman.

Schlesinger lived quite openly with his partner, Michael Childers, since the late 1960s, although he didn’t publicly address his sexuality until 1991, when Sir Ian McKellen was attacked for being the first openly gay person to be knighted. Schlesinger was one of a dozen British gay and lesbian artists who signed a letter coming to McKellen’s defense.

In 1998, Schlesinger underwent a quadruple heart bypass, and then suffered a stroke in 2000. He remained in poor health until his death in 2003.

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