Vomiting, shocks and surgery: this is how homosexuality used to be "treated". Some methods are like something out of a horror movie

Imagine falling in love. Not because you want to provoke. Not because you're confused. Just because you're human. But the world around you sees your desire not as a natural part of life, but as evidence of an inner disturbance. A priest speaks of sin, a judge of crime, a doctor of diagnosis. And suddenly you find yourself not in a love story, but in a doctor's office, a treatment room, or an interrogation room.

This was the reality for many queer people at a time when homosexuality was not only socially condemned but also criminalized and medicalized in many countries. For a long time, modern psychiatry did not just act as a helping profession to relieve people's suffering. In the case of homosexuality, it has often become an extended arm of the social norm. Instead of the question "how can we help you live better?" came the question "how can we change you?"

The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its diagnostic manual of diseases in 1973, and the World Health Organization stopped classifyingit as a mental disorder in 1990. Historically, that's not that long ago. Many people living among us today grew up in a time when their orientation was still officially described in the language of pathology.

Therapy of resistance: pain as an "educational method"

One of the best known and most frightening methods was so-called aversion therapy. Its principle was simple on paper: if a person feels desire for someone of the same sex, this desire must be combined with disgust, pain or nausea. In practice, this meant that men were exposed to erotic photographs of men while receiving electric shocks or vomit-inducing drugs. The aim was not to understand their experience, but to produce a reflex in the body: male nudity equals pain, desire equals disgust.

From today's perspective, it seems like a brutal experiment. But in the 50s, 60s and 70s, similar methods were used in professional circles. A British study on the "treatment" of homosexuality from the 1950s onwards described cases where the most common method was just behavioural aversion therapy with electric shocks. Other historical research notes that variations of these treatments often worked with electric shocks or nausea-inducing agents.

What is also frightening about the whole thing is how "rationally" it was presented. This was not torture in a dark dungeon, but a procedure embedded in the language of science, clinical practice and remedy. Suffering was translated into words like "conditioning," "therapeutic procedure," or "behavior modification." The person who longed for love was reduced to an object of experimentation in such a system.

The Czechoslovakian trail: an experiment that proved otherwise

Surprisingly, Czechoslovakia has also made its mark in the history of aversion therapy. In the post-war years, some professionals there tried to "cure" homosexuality with behavioural methods. But the results gradually showed something that should sound obvious today - sexual orientation cannot simply be flipped like a switch.

The Czechoslovak sexologist Kurt Freund played a significant role in this. According to historical studies, after unsuccessful attempts to change orientation, he came to the conclusion that homosexuality was not "curable" by drugs or therapy, including electroshock, and later supported the decriminalisation of homosexuality. The Czechoslovak context is often cited as an important moment in history when the failure of "cure" became an argument against punishing homosexual people.

This does not mean, of course, that Czechoslovakia was a paradise of tolerance. Homosexuality had long been criminalized in the country, and even after legal changes, a strong social stigma remained. Still, it is historically remarkable that it was the failure to "fix" it that helped some experts understand that the problem lay not with homosexual people, but with the system that made them the problem.

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Testicular transplants: when doctors looked for homosexuality in the body

Attempts to explain homosexuality as a bodily, hormonal or organ "defect" represent an even more bizarre chapter. The Austrian physiologist Eugen Steinach was one of the scientists who attached great importance to the gonads and hormonal processes in the early 20th century. One of the most famous cases involved attempts to change sexual orientation through transplantation of testicular tissue.

Steinach and his associates concluded that a homosexual man developed heterosexual tendencies after transplanting part of his testicle. From today's perspective, however, such an interpretation seems not only scientifically problematic, but also a demonstration of an era that desperately sought the "cause" of homosexuality in an organ, hormone, or physical aberration.

Such experiments show how deep the desire to find a simple explanation went. If homosexuality resided in the testicles, it could be operated on. If it were a question of hormones, it could be chemically rewritten. If it were a learned reflex, it could be unlearned. But human sexuality was never as simple as the medicine of the day would have liked.

Alan Turing and chemical castration

One of the most famous symbols of state-sanctioned violence against gay men is the British mathematician Alan Turing. The man who played a crucial role in cracking the Nazi ciphers and was one of the founding figures of modern computer science was convicted in 1952 for having a homosexual relationship. Instead of prison, he underwent hormone treatment, often described today as chemical castration.

Turing's story is famous precisely because it later became a symbol of a huge historical injustice. He should not have been "corrected". He should not have been punished. He should not have been subjected to the humiliation of being gay. But his case is also reminiscent of thousands of lesser-known men whose names never made it into the textbooks. Men who were forced to choose between prison, "treatment", public shame or a lifetime of hiding. Chemical castration in this context was not a treatment for homosexuality. It was an attempt to suppress a man's sexuality, his body and his dignity.

Lobotomy and the belief that "deviance" could be cut out

In addition to shocks, hormones and transplants, extreme psychiatric interventions have also occurred throughout history. Homosexuality has in some periods been classified as a psychological disorder, and within this broad framework there have been cases of psychosurgery or lobotomy. The U.S. National History Museum notes that the instruments used for lobotomy were among the items associated with attempts to "cure" homosexuality at a time when it was considered a psychiatric disorder.

Lobotomy was generally based on the idea that certain psychological difficulties could be alleviated by severing connections in the brain. In practice, it often meant devastating interference with personality, emotions and the ability to function.

It is important to add that not every gay person was exposed to such methods and not all countries followed the same approach. However, the very fact that homosexuality could be the reason for considering such radical interventions shows how dangerous it is when societal resistance begins to masquerade as a professional diagnosis.

The couch, guilt and the "bad mother"

Not all attempts to change homosexuality have been physically brutal. Some took the form of long psychotherapy sessions in which the supposed cause of homosexuality was sought in childhood, in the family, in the mother, in the father, in trauma or in "immature" psychosexual development. One did not have to be electrocuted to be harmed. Sometimes all it took was years of hearing that his ability to love was the result of a disorder.

It is this part of history that is perhaps less spectacular, but all the more insidious. Electric shock sounds like horror. By contrast, the phrase "you just have to work your way to your true heterosexuality" can sound soft, professional and almost kind. But it really says the same thing - your current self is not okay.

Many conversion approaches have built on the idea that homosexuality is a flaw that can be discovered and corrected. Sometimes the talk was about a domineering mother and a weak father, sometimes about fear of women, sometimes about a lack of male role models. These interpretations today seem like psychologized stereotypes. Yet they have survived for a long time, and in some settings they still return today in more modern guises.

From surgeries to religious courses

When homosexuality gradually ceased to be officially labelled as a disease in Western medicine, it did not mean that conversion practices disappeared. They just often moved elsewhere. From doctor's offices to religious communities, from hospitals to counseling rooms, from hard psychiatry to the softer vocabulary of "healing," "purity," "identity," or "liberation."

Yet today's professional organizations have long warned that efforts to change sexual orientation or gender identity are not legitimate treatment. The American Psychiatric Association reiterated in 2026 that being LGBTQ+ is not a mental illness and that conversion therapy is a discredited, potentially harmful practice unsupported by scientific evidence. The American Psychological Association similarly states that these efforts are ineffective in changing orientation and may pose a risk of harm.

This is also important because modern conversion therapy may no longer look like a movie set with electrodes. It can take the form of a weekend retreat, a conversation with a counselor, a prayer circle, or a therapeutic-sounding program. It can be subtle. But if its goal is not to support a person but to change his or her orientation, it carries the same logic as the old methods: you're not okay until you're heterosexual.

The real treatment? The cure had to be society

The history of the "treatment" of homosexuality is full of bizarre and cruel methods. Testicular transplants sound absurd today. Electroshock sounds horrifying. Chemical castration inhuman. Lobotomy almost unimaginable. But all of these methods grew from the same root - the belief that heterosexuality is the only right option for human life.