How a psychologist’s change of heart prompted a sea change for LGBTQ rights

Gerald Davison objects to anyone calling him “one of the six cardinal bishops of behavioral therapy,” as Radiolab podcast host Jad Abumrad recently referred to him. However, given his numerous awards and the many publications citing him, there is little doubt about Davison’s influence on the science and practice of clinical psychology.

But what many may not know about Davison, professor of psychology at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, is that he took a stand against conversion therapy early in his career that sent waves through the entire field of psychology and psychiatry and eventually increased social and political acceptance of LGBTQ people.

A stance against conversion

Elected in 1972 as president of the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy, now known as the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT), when he was just 33, Davison spent much of his presidency refuting erroneous charges that behavior therapy was akin to the torture used to rehabilitate the psychopath Alex DeLarge in Anthony Burgess’ fictitious A Clockwork Orange.

For centuries, churches and other institutions — and later, psychologists and psychiatrists— treated homosexuality as a disease or disorder, often using methods that inflict pain and shame, including electric shock, Davison notes.

Davison, who has been at USC Dornsife since 1979 and holds a joint appointment at USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, has drawn renewed public attention for his stance against “conversion therapy,” known in professional circles as “sexual reorientation treatment,” because of two recently released films that highlight the personal stories of teens forced by families to attend camps that claimed to turn gay kids straight. The Miseducation of Cameron Post, based on a novel by Emily M. Danforth, hit theaters in August 2018, and Boy Erased, based on a memoir by Garrard Conley, that debuted in November 2018. 

Abumrad interviewed Davison for a special podcast series, UnErased, about his remarkable role in the profession’s condemnation of conversion therapy. Teen Vogue also highlighted his significance in an article last summer.

“My position was to not only stop doing conversion therapy, but to also not do it even if patients ask for it,” recalls Davison, who laid out his concerns about conversion therapy in detail during a 1974 speech to ABCT.

Gerald Davison

“What are we really saying to our clients when, on the one hand, we assure them that they are not abnormal and on the other hand, present them with an array of techniques, some of them painful, which are aimed at eliminating that set of feelings and behavior that we have just told them is okay?” he asked then. “What is the real range of ‘free choice’ available to homosexually oriented people who are racked with guilt, self-hate, and embarrassment, and who must endure the burden of societal prejudice and discrimination? … How have we helped them with these problems?”

In taking this position, Davison was arguing that psychotherapeutic goals are strongly influenced, if not determined by larger sociocultural factors, and that these factors inevitably make therapy an ethical and political enterprise. 

Davison says he did not know at the time that his thoughts and words would be profoundly influential for society, far beyond the walls of clinical offices.

“I was saying simply, ‘This is what I think is right,’” Davison says. “I was not thinking that I was going to be part of, or a leader of, a movement that would lead to mental health professions regarding sexual reorientation as unethical and to state legislatures designating it as illegal.”

Pure motivations

Like many researchers, Davison arrived at his conclusion after a journey of his own. Early in his academic career at Stony Brook University in 1966, some young men came to him for help with their feelings for other men. He developed his own form of conversion therapy, encouraging them to redirect their desires to images of women in Playboy magazine.

“My motivations were pure. I thought that I was doing something positive by helping them relieve their psychological pain, and helping them live more comfortably in society at large,” Davison recalls. “I didn’t think homosexuality was an illness, nor a perversion. But I thought they were making a voluntary decision, and I saw it as my duty to help them through it.” 

That was the standard for practice at the time, he adds.

Davison published articles about the work and even produced a dramatized film about the therapy. But he soon encountered criticism from some of his peers. Clinical psychologist Charles Silverstein held a symposium in October 1972 at the ABCT convention accusing therapists like Davison of perpetuating further discrimination, guilt and shame for the vulnerable and emotionally distraught men who had asked him for help.

At first, Davison admits he felt angry. But as he considered Silverstein’s criticisms, he realized that he had a point.

A change of heart

Davison himself went through a conversion, so to speak, in the days and weeks following Silverstein’s diatribe. During his 1973–74 presidential year, Davison persuaded the ABCT board of directors to adopt a resolution that declared that homosexuality is not in itself a mental illness.

In his outgoing presidential speech to the ABCT in November 1974, Davison went beyond the organization’s resolution, warning fellow therapists that, despite condemning conversion therapy, they were still approaching homosexuality as a problem in need of a solution. Many continued to offer reorientation treatment to patients who asked for it, he says, and it was time to stop.

Ongoing progress

Davison believes that there has been a sharp decline in the number of men coming to psychologists and other health professionals for help with being gay, further validating his 1974 argument to end conversion therapy. His stance at the ABCT set the bar for other organizations focused on psychiatric and psychological help. In 1998, the American Psychiatric Association adopted his earlier position, declaring sexual reorientation treatments improper and unethical. In 2009, the American Psychological Association followed suit.

Since Davison issued his first statements to the ABCT, activists have fought for and achieved several milestones for LGBTQ rights. For example, marriage equality became federal law in 2015, due to a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Conversion therapy has been banned in 13 states and Washington, D.C., according to the Movement Advancement Project, an organization focused on ending the practice.

Two years ago, in an essay he wrote for Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, Davison shared his reflections on his efforts in the ’70s to end conversion therapy, repeating his concern that therapists had a powerful role in determining how to help their patients.

“Change-of-orientation programs should be stopped, even when patients request them because prejudice and often physical attacks against homosexuals have made it highly unlikely that ‘voluntary’ change requests are in fact self-determined,” he wrote.

These statements on the role of the therapist remain true today, he says.