By Terry Vanderheyden
NEW YORK, January 4, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Dr. Charles W. Socarides, who maintained that homosexuality is a treatable mental disorder, has died at 83. He died in a New York hospital Christmas day from heart failure.
Socarides, who was also a professor of clinical psychiatry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, maintained his views even after the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental diseases, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, in 1973.
A co-founder of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, Socarides maintained that the APA was a victim of “political assault” from homosexual advocacy groups. In his work, “Thought Reform and the Psychology of Homosexual Advocacy”, Socarides described what he called “jamming”– a technique utilized by homosexual advocates to instil doubt in the minds of pro-family leaders as to the correctness in their belief in the abnormality of homosexuality. This is done by oft-repeated but unfounded accusations of hateful speech and un-Christian-like conduct, and the equally unfounded assertion that pro-family positions are held by only an insignificant minority of society.
Socarides said he had treated approximately 1,000 homosexuals in his practice that spanned four decades, a third of whom he said had successfully reverted to heterosexuality after treatment. He described the syndrome as one born from an overbearing mother and an absent father; he utilized a psychoanalysis approach to treatment.
Socarides admitted his own failure for his son who, openly homosexual, became a Clinton administration Whitehouse advisor on homosexual issues. He said that he had failed his son after divorcing his first wife by not spending enough time with him.
Read a sample of Dr. Socarides work at:
https://www.leaderu.com/orgs/narth/1995papers/socarides.html