Certain individuals who want to change their homosexual preference can
be helped by a short-term intensive intervention adapted from the Masters
and Johnson model for treating heterosexual disorders. Pretreatment
counseling aims at improving the patient's dating, sexual, and intimacy
skills; creative problem solving; and stress management. Then for 2 weeks
the patient and an opposite-sex partner, living in social isolation, meet
daily with a therapy team to address fears and anxieties about intimacy as
they arise. The directive psychotherapy format alternates between
confrontation of maladaptive belief systems and patterns of relating and
support for finding new ways of coping that foster a positive
self-image.Abstract Teaser