A comprehensive critical review of the “2021 [American Psychological Association] APA resolution on sexual orientation change efforts” (original) (raw)

2022, Journal of Human Sexuality

This is a comprehensive version of a shorter report by the same authors We have examined the “APA [American Psychological Association] Resolution on Sexual Orientation Change Efforts” (APA, 2021) and while doing so have noted several problems. The APA (2021) Resolution report is largely flawed in terms of theory, logic, and science. The APA’s position features several examples of non-sequiturs for which we respond. It relies almost exclusively on sexual minority theory when many other theories might be useful. It relies upon seriously flawed logic, treating SOCE as unchanged and unimproved over the past six decades. In addition, it relies upon very weak and limited science, overlooking recent reports on SOCE outcomes, not considering effect sizes for SOCE treatments, treating correlational results as causal, and often overlooking ways of testing more complex models of SOCE. The same limitations apply to much of the material reported in APA’s book edited by Haldeman (2022a), therefore not deserving a separate review. As such, we concluded that readers of the APA (2021) resolution report or Haldeman (2022a) for that matter, would walk away with unequivocal, one-sided, and misguided information about the topic of SOCE, and therefore a fact-checked critical analysis is presented. We address the report’s main sections, respond to non-sequiturs, and we present summary results from several more recent SOCE studies.