Unethical to Teach a Boy to Become a Man

The NeuroCritic blogger writes:

It's 2022, and the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) has just issued a belated apology because two of their past Presidents published papers on “aversion therapies” for “converting” gay and transgender individuals to the socially prescribed norms of sexuality and gender identity. 

Well, they didn't actually say this, nor did they name the prominent and distinguished clinical psychologists who authored these papers. Although these luminaries signed on to the mea culpa, there was no direct admission of the harm caused by these ill-advised practices. Instead, the document focused on “the courageous and historic role that some of our members have played in advancing SGM [sexual and gender minority] rights and mental health (e.g., Drs. Charles Silverstein and Gerald Davison).”  ...

But documentation of this history and legacy is rather sketchy... Without naming names, the Apology cited the recent review of Capriotti and Donaldson (2022), which in turn asked “Why don’t behavior analysts do something?” about retracting the unethical paper of Rekers and Lovaas (1974).

So what is this unethical paper they are all embarrassed about? It detailed:

The subject was treated sequentially in the clinic and home environments by his mother, trained to be his therapist. The mother was taught to reinforce masculine behaviors and to extinguish feminine behaviors, by using social reinforcement in the clinic and a token reinforcement procedure in the home. During this treatment, his feminine behaviors sharply decreased and masculine behavior increased. ...

Follow-up data three years after the treatment began suggests that the boy's sex-typed behaviors have become normalized.

That is, the boy had some girlie behaviors, outside of accepted norms, and the mother successfully encouraged masculinity, resulting in a normal boy.

This is what psychotherapy is supposed to do. A client complains about unusual behaviors that are causing distress. The therapist verifies that the behaviors are abnormal, and devises strategies for correcting them. It is all measured in a reasonably scientific way.  

This is now considered unethical by the clinical psychotherapists. I guess they are now supposed to steer the boy into being homosexual or transgendered or queer in some other way.

This is all you need to know about today's psychotherapists. They are evil, and should be avoided at all costs.