An attempt to shape human penile responses

Abstract

P otency disorders of insidious onset and long duration have a poor prognosis both in conventional therapy (Johnson 1965) and when treated by desensitization (Cooper 1969). Homosexual patients with little hetero- sexual interest prior to treatment show a poor response to anticipatory avoidance conditioning (Feldman 1969). McConaghy (1969) suggests that at least some forms of aversion therapy may be followed by a further reduction in heterosexual interest: aversion therapy may therefore be particularly inappropriate in patients who already exhibit reduced or absent heterosexual interest. Thus, in the treatment of some homosexuals and in some potency disorders there is a need for a new technique which would strengthen heterosexual interest. Classical conditioning has been used by Rachman (1967) and Rachman and Hodgson (1968) to produce conditioned phallic responses to previously neutral stimuli in normal males. Laws and Rubin (1969) have used instructions to control normal male sexual responses. Recently operant conditioning of autonomic responses has been convincingly demonstrated in animals and less definitely in man (Katkin and Murray, 1968). As operant procedures exert a characteristically strong control over the occurrence and amplitude of responses they may be particularly appropriate for the manipulation of heterosexual interest. The present study reports a pilot attempt to give a heterosexual stimulus discriminative control over phallic responses in a homosexual.