Gerard van den Aardweg
Homosexuality & Hope
Gerard van den Aardweg may be the world’s meanest reparative therapist. He is living proof that such child abuse should be 
banned across America. Furthermore, it is telling that he sits on NARTH’s Scientific Advisory Committee. This really gives some keen insight into the soul of this anti-gay organization. It is not about hope or healing – but hatred and harming gay clients. It is not about self-determination, but teaching self-delusion. The sooner this so-called “therapy” is eliminated, the better off LGBT youth will be.
The following quotes are from van den Aardweg 1985 book, Homosexuality & Hope: A Psychologist Talks About Treatment and Change. There were so many hateful and harmful quotes that I had to divide them into categories:
Bisexuality
Change Process (What the therapist says about his process to “cure” LGBT people)
Credentials (meaning his claim of clinical expertise)
Family Dynamics (Etiology)
Fear (Scaring clients into therapy and not coming out)
Humor Therapy (Must read)
Junk Science
Lesbians (Hint: He’s not fond of “mannish” lesbians)
Mental Illness (i.e. violating APA standards by calling LGBT people sick and in need of a cure)
Natural Law
Politics (A legitimate therapist or a culture warrior from the Family Research Council)
Religious (NARTH therapists are supposed to be secular. Think, again)
Self-Pity (His reason that people become gay)
Sexism
Smear (See how van den Aardweg slimes the entire LGBT community)
Whining (van den Aardweg’s self-pity party where he blames militant homosexuals)
Youth (see how NARTH and van den Aardweg are a danger to LGBT youth)
Bisexuality
“Bisexuality flows from this double personality structure. The sexual orientation from the adult part, as it has been developed, is directed to the mature object of sexuality, the opposite sex. The ‘pitiable child’ on the other hand pulls sexuality to his immature objects. Since one part of the bisexual’s personality suppresses the other, it is evident that the heterosexuality of these persons is not full-fledged.” (Ch. 7, p. 78)
Change Process
“The change process is comparable to climbing the stairs when the end is not clearly visible. You do not exactly know where you 
will end up; but every stair climbed means improvement, progress. (Ch. 8, p. 80)
“The first stage of the road to change consists of growing out of the homosexual orientation. That usually takes some years. It will have become clear from earlier explanations of homosexuality that the homosexual urge itself is only a part of a more complex structure of infantile behavior tendencies. Hence the waning of the homosexual interest parallels the gradual decrease of inferiority feelings and ego-centered self-pity.” (Ch. 8., p. 80)
“We advise the client used to practicing homosexual behavior to suppress his desires for contact, or to break off his relationship with a homosexual partner.” (Ch. 8, p. 81)
“If one wants to change in depth, that is, to grow beyond one’s infantilism and ‘puerilism,’ a continuous effort of the will is called for. At certain ties, this means simply saying ‘no’ to tendencies recognized as puerile. At other times, it means that certain things must be done that cost a lot of effort and some courage.” (Ch. 8, p. 83)
“Changes in sexual feelings are more or less ‘by-products’ and will certainly appear when—and to the degree that—the client’s ‘complaining child’ has been starved…the deeper the client changes in the fundamental dimensions of infantilism and self-pity, the more radical his reorientation will be.” (Ch. 8, Ch. 88)
“The whole process thus is a kind of self-reeducation. Ups and downs, and occasional relapses are part of it.” (Ch. 8, p. 88)
“Here we find the common experience that a cured homosexual takes on a ‘brand new personality;’ the cure of homosexuality is primarily an overall emotional change or a personality change.” (Ch. 9, p. 93)
“I think these cases are perhaps more numerous than we would presume, because many of them prefer to stay anonymous and not be public examples of ‘the converted and cured homosexual.” (Ch. 9, p. 96)
“Occasionally, he relapsed and engaged anew in homosexual contacts, without however, his former excitement.” (Ch. 10, p. 113)
“Credentials”
“The present book is written after more than twenty years of study of homosexuality and after treating more than 225 homosexual men and about thirty lesbian women from the viewpoint of the self-pity theory.” (Ch. 4, p. 45)
“From extensive analysis of a series of 101 persons I had in treatment, I have derived the following summarizing statements about the effectiveness of our therapy. Of those who continued treatment—60 percent of the total group—about two-thirds reached at least a satisfactory state of affairs for a long period of time. By this is meant that the homosexual feelings had been reduced to occasional impulses at most while the sexual orientation had turned predominately heterosexual, or that the homosexual feelings were completely absent, with or without predominance of heterosexual interests. Of this group, however, about one-third could be regarded as having been changed ‘radically.’ By this is meant that they did not have any more homosexual feelings, and in addition that they showed a fundamental change in overall emotionality from negative to positive—from instability to reasonable, normal stability—with follow-up period of at least two years.” (Ch. 10, p 105-106)
“About twenty percent of homosexuals in treatment do not seem to change perceptibly.” (Ch. 10, p. 107)
Family Dynamics
“A boy can come to feel less boyish, less virile, when brought up in an overprotected, overanxious, meddling way by his mother, and when his father has been of too little importance in his education.” (Ch. 6, p. 61)
“In 60 to 70 percent of the cases, the mother has been over ‘binding’ in one way or another: overconcerned, overprotecting, domineering, meddling, or pampering.” (Ch. 5, p. 64)
“For all the attempts by defensive and militant homosexuals and liberal-minded sex reformers to play it down, it is an indisputable fact that their mothers occupied too central a place in the childhood emotional life of numerous homophile men.” (Ch. 5, p. 64)
“We are then correct to state that the father-son relationship is seldom positive. A man who develops a homosexual inferior complex has generally found his father not enough of a father.” (Ch. 5, p. 64)
“The incidence of satisfactory marriage relationships is, however, statistically lower among parents of the homosexually inclined than among parents whose children did not develop this complex. This helps understand, once again, that homosexuality is not only a phenomenon of the one so concerned, but is also a symptom of imbalance in the family and not infrequently of parental discord.” (Ch. 5, p. 67)
“The first and foremost persons who can avert this stunted growth in their children are of course the parents. They must set the example of a normal man-woman relationship. If their marriage is good and they succeed reasonably in creating an atmosphere of cheerfulness and togetherness, they considerably reduce the chances of the coming into being of any neurotic complex, including the homosexual kind.” (Ch. 11, p. 117)
“The primordial preventive factor is the parents’ appreciation of the boy as a boy and the girl as a girl. (Ch. 11, p. 118)
Fear
“Homosexuals themselves have begun to have second thoughts, have begun to reflect thoughtfully on the nature of their lives. The AIDS crisis has raised in no uncertain terms some of the consequences of a totally uninhibited and militant gay lifestyle. However AIDS is part of a broader realization among homosexuals and others that the homosexual way of living, even quite independent of any medical consequences, has been very damaging for many.” (Paul C. Vitz, Intro, pp. 7-8)
“A large number of homosexuals are very unhappy with their way of living. When they learn they are homosexual, almost all homosexuals are appalled and depressed by this knowledge. The homosexual lifestyle breeds enormous amounts of guilt, not neurotic guilt (although I’m sure there’s some of that, too), but true guilt: guilt over sexual promiscuity, guilt over constant lies about permanent loving relationships that are broken within weeks, sometimes within days or hours. This guilt plus dashed hopes about living a heterosexual life weigh heavily on many homosexuals.” (Paul C. Vitz, Intro, p. 8)
“But perhaps we had better pay attention to a not so vociferous and often forgotten group of well-meaning homosexuals. They feel troubled by their predicament and its consequences such as social isolation, remaining single, and loneliness. They often feel unhappy and inferior, even desperate.” (Ch. 1, p. 16)
“The homosexual style of life is represented in the media in a slanted, rose colored way. That may be understandable as propaganda, but if one hears the life stories of practicing homosexuals over the course of many years, it becomes clear that happiness is not to be found in that way of life. Restlessness in their contacts, loneliness, jealousy, neurotic depressions, and proportionally many suicides (leaving aside venereal and other physical diseases): that is the other side of the coin not shown in the media.” (Ch. 2, pg. 22)
“The person with a homosexual drive is pulled to a neurotic and conflictions existence. Stubbornly and imperviously, against all advice, despite the sorrow they inflict on their parents, young people with this problem cling to their ‘choice’ of what their ignorance mistakes for ‘happiness.’ It may be hard, but it is true: not a few of them degenerate, their youthful freshness and gladness disappear; they become weaklings in many respects – like addicts.” (Ch. 2, pg. 24)
“The craving for a person of the same sex is passive, a quest for being cherished. It is not a happy and joyful experience like normal falling in love; the underlying feeling is of hopelessness, a kind of pain. This asking for love is of course, entirely ego-directed. Homoerotic love is self-centered, ‘narcissistic.’” (Ch. 5, p. 59)
“Nor can the homosexual affair or relationship satisfy or give any happiness other than a short-lived emotional ‘kick.’ The ideal giver of warmth exists only in the insatiable fantasy of the sufferer from this complex and therefore is never found.” (Ch. 5, p. 60)
“Dannecker corroborates his affirmation with statistics on the number of partners of the homosexually oriented as compared with heterosexuals. What he says is not new. It confirms the compulsive character of homosexuality, it’s frenzy. It is not ‘gay’ in the sense of ‘joyful,’ it is an addiction.”
“Seeking for a lover is repetitive. Although homosexually inclined women have on average longer relationships than homosexually inclined men, in neither case do their partnerships last over the years. The neurotic addiction to feelings of unfulfilled longing – in other words, neurotic complaining – has them in its grip and forces them to go after new illusions forever.” (Ch. 7, p. 75)
Humor Therapy
“As a psychotherapist who is especially intent on detecting expressions of childish self-pity, I often train my clients in applying methods or techniques of humor aimed at neutralization of the manifold manifestations of basic neurotic emotion. Smiling and laughing at one’s infantile ‘poor me’ and one’s infantile complaints can be very effective in undermining its strength. The effectiveness of such techniques—like ‘hyperdramatization’ of the inner child’s pitifulness—is dependent on the client’s will to use them in his everyday life, however.” (Ch. 8, p. 84)
“The goal of self-humor is to replace a complaint by its opposite – a smile or a laugh. In general, the goal is to neutralize the ‘inner child’s’ importance…The emotion released by smiling and laughing has the capacity to reach the infantile ego.”
“He then imagines his ‘little child’ as standing before him in the flesh, or visualizes himself in his imagination as the ‘child’ he was in his past. He starts talking to this ‘child,’ like someone who exaggeratedly pities another. He tells the ‘child’ how enormously pitiful he is; accumulating a series of fantasized reasons for his complaining, he paints before this ‘child’s’ eyes a super-drama (hyper-drama) surrounding the complaint.” (Ch. 8, p. 85)
“He treats his ‘child,’ for instance, as ‘my poor boy.’ For example, ‘That critical remark they made about you was awful! Now the President will announce a Day of National Mourning on your behalf!’ or more simply: ‘Poor boy! This will be your death!’ The more vividly he sees the imagined scene before his eyes the more exaggeratedly pitiful he sees his ‘child’ at the moment of complaining, the better it penetrates…Every approach that elicits smiling or laughing about a complaint is advisable.” (Ch. 8, p. 87)
“Homosexual interests fluctuate for a long time, but are felt less and less overwhelming. They fade away undramatically, as a function of the overall increase of a more positive and mature emotionality. The sexual change should be regarded as a part of the total emotional reorientation.” (Ch. 8, p. 88)
Junk Science
“Homosexual feelings during adolescent (puberty), up to about seventeen years of age, are usually transitory and must be looked at as a stage of psychosexual development.” (Ch. 2, p. 18)
“On the other hand, some have only sporadic or hardly heterosexual impulses, the so-called exclusive homosexuals. (I say ‘hardly any’ because Freud rightly affirmed that in a careful analysis of the fantasy and dream life over the whole course of the life of the person with strong homosexual tenancies, one always finds traces of a normal, deeply hidden heterosexual disposition.) (Ch. 2, p. 19)
“The possible correlation between homosexuality and ‘muscle weakness’ could mean, for instance, that boys with deficient muscular growth run a higher risk of becoming sexually deviant because of their feeling inferior on that account…it is precisely youthful inferiority feelings about the physical appearance, body build, and the like that can motivate a development to a homosexual orientation.” (Ch. 2, p. 29)
“Homosexual feelings, in fact, spring from feeling deficient in one’s masculinity or femininity as perceived by the child (or adolescent), thus from comparison with others.” (Ch. 5, p. 55)
“Homosexual longings are transitory and superficial. Homosexual longings and the associated longings for warmth and compassion can be experienced as the most beautiful and deepest in a person’s life. Yet this is self-deception. Homosexual feelings, sometimes extolled as ‘pure love’ as more profound as marital love, in fact hardly have anything to do with real love. They are self-centered love. This love is an asking, even a begging for love and attention. This is clear from the way homosexual partnerships usually end. The partner is there to fulfill the infantile ego’s needs but is not really loved for his or her own being. As a result, there may be clutching to the other on one side and lack of real interest and indifference on the other. It is remarkable how these people may speak of their past relationships—without emotion, like children who threw away a toy they are not interested in anymore.” (Ch. 7, p. 76)
“Genuine cheerfulness and gaiety are the exact opposite of this complaining sickness. If it is true that some homosexuals play the role as jester, the funnyman, one will on closer inspection recognize the depressed, self-pitying child behind this game-playing. That may be a puerile way of drawing admiring attention to the infantile ego. There is always an underlying restlessness.” (Ch. 7, p. 76)
“The homosexually oriented have a hunger for attention, which they can channel in various ways. They may cling to others to absorb their attention. They may present themselves unconsciously as victims, appealing for help and protection to others’ compassionate feelings. Some may impose themselves on their environment, others tyrannize their environment as real child can do sometimes.” (Ch. 7., Pg. 77)
“The inner child of the past’ preserves infantile attitudes and feelings in regard to the opposite sex. The homosexual man may continue hating women as the adolescent of the past looked upon them as intruders in his life, or as rivals who would steal his comrades, or simply as ‘those silly girls’ who are spoilers in the boys world. He may still feel inferior and fearful in front of them, feeling ashamed of his insufficient manliness. He may also continue viewing certain women as the protecting, mothering, attention-giving figures, not as adult female human beings to whom he should relate as an adult man.” (Ch. 7, p. 77)
“Many people being treated for a homosexual neurosis will come to realize that a chronic complaint drive is going on in their emotions. It is clearly observable, or they can see it as an accompanying negative emotional overtone, often spoiling positive feelings and experiences. These individuals increasingly become aware that their unhappy feelings are not caused by the problems of their life, external situations, or other persons, but by the negative force within themselves.” (Ch. 8, p. 82)
“As we have seen, the homosexual fantasy was created as an illusory solution of an inner drama and the pleasure of its satisfaction often implies a great deal more than simple sexual gratification.” (Ch. 8, p. 83)
Lesbians
“The ‘mannish’ woman with lesbian feelings is not that way by natural disposition, but by habit and a specific inferiority complex.” (Ch. 2, p. 17)
“When a mother succeeds in making her daughter feel appreciated as a female, the girl will feel at home in the women’s world and among her age-mates of the same-sex. In homosexually oriented women, very often the relationship with mother was not a personal and confidential one; there was no sharing of womanly interests, no joint activities in the ‘female area’ As a consequence, the girl did not feel valuable as a girl; that is, different from a boy, but just as valuable.” (Ch. 6, p. 70)
“In some women, an ugliness complex, with the emphasis on feeling less feminine, less attractive as a girl, may also have played a part as a precipitating factor.” (Ch. 6, p. 71)
“They may have developed a manifest dislike for feminine behavior, clothes, and domestic activities. This overcompensatory mannish self-assertiveness is, however, marked by a lack of natural smoothness. It is overdone; the emotional tension underneath is perceptible.” (Ch. 6, p. 72)
“The main factor on the development of a lesbian orientation is a girl’s self-comparison with same-sex age mates or with certain older ‘ideal’ women.” (Ch. 6, p. 72)
“On similar grounds, the ‘girl in the lesbian woman’ may continue viewing men through the colored glasses of hatred, envy, fear, or annoyance.” (Ch. 7, p. 78)
Mental Illness
“Dr. van den Aardweg shows that homosexuality is one of the possible pathologies that all of us are subject to. It has its origins in the way we are raised and in various experiences of later life. As a pathology we can understand it—and recover from it.” (Paul C. Vitz, Intro, p. 9)
“Once we see and understand homosexuality as something like these other psychological problems from which one can recover, our perception changes in two ways. The homosexual is given hope for change and, at the same time, there is a kind of acceptance of the homosexual as part of normal, human society and, like the rest of us, subject to pathology.” (Paul C. Vitz, Intro, p. 10)
“I shall show you that homosexuality is an emotional disturbance that develops in childhood and adolescence. (Ch. 1, p. 15)
“I will argue that homosexual feelings spring from a special type of inferiority complex: hence innately such a person is not homosexual, but heterosexual.” (Ch.2, p. 17)
“It is the militant homosexuals who gave the world the slogan that ‘one person in twenty’ is a homosexual. This is pure propaganda. Some seem to think that a high incidence in the population would make the condition more normal, but of course there is no logic to that. Just because a high percentage of the population suffers from some kind of rheumatism, that does not mean that it is no longer a disease.” (Ch. 2, p. 19)
“Moreover, the process of outgrowing a neurosis, a homosexual neurosis for that matter, is best described as a combination of gaining self-insight and fighting one’s recognized infantilisms on a broad front.” (Ch. 4, p. 43)
“In my opinion, anyone who tries to approach the available physiological and psychological literature open-mindedly will have to admit that the best-fitting interpretation of homosexuality must be the idea of a neurotic variant. That relatively few social and other scientists of today seem to draw this conclusion, indeed that it is all but barred from publicity, is on account of the predominant homosexual liberal tendencies that censure unwelcome views.” (Ch. 4, p. 45)
“Hence, apart from the specific symptom of the homosexual desire, homophilia is not an isolates phenomenon but one of an endless series of neurotic problems.” (Ch. 5, p. 53)
“Many homosexually inclined persons perceive their sexual drive as an obsession, chronic, or temporary. Their sexual feelings often direct a great part of their attention, consume much of their thinking, more so than in heterosexuals. Homosexual impulses really have something compulsive about them., in that they resemble other neurotic disturbances such as phobias, obsessional worries, and obsessive-compulsive neuroses. They make the sufferer restless. The driving force of this compulsiveness is the dissatisfaction inherent in the inferiority complaint. This makes the longing insatiable, because the same complaint will always recur.” (Ch. 5, p. 59-60)
“We recapitulate: unconsciously, what the homosexual seeks is not to find and enjoy, but to ache and to suffer in order to feed the need for self-dramatization.” (Ch. 5, p. 60)
“Thus we raise the probability of the guilt of the homosexual neurotic himself. Is he responsible for his situation? Or is he entirely a victim of his illness, a patient?…Some degree of guilt must be involved if a homosexually oriented person gives in too easily to his impulses, by masturbation or by seeking contacts, and even more if he justifies his behavior and recommends it.” (Ch. 6, p. 63)
“The ‘complaining child’ in the adult keeps the emotional life at an immature level in other areas than the sexual. The emotional infantilism of people with a homosexual complex make them behave and think like children and in fact to repress normal emotional growth to a degree that depends of the strength of the complex.” (Ch. 7, p. 77)
Natural Law
“We repeat: is it likely that nature – or it’s Creator – would have been so sloppy with man, who is much more complicated and refined than any animal and obviously its most splendid product, as to leave, of all mechanisms, the one that sees to his survival, to the mercy of chance? Did nature forget to do with a man what she in fact did with animals: to establish a stable and time-proof heterosexual drive?” (Ch. 3, p. 35)
“By nature man is attracted to the opposite sex.” (Ch. 3, p. 35)
Politics
“The propaganda for the acceptance of homosexuality has its main origin in the circles of militant homosexuals themselves. They are given a privileged opportunity to speak out whenever there is something to do with homosexuality in the media, or when an article, a book, or a movie on the subject comes out. Apparently, they are considered the best experts on their own emotional condition. On closer inspection, however, there is more reason to suppose that exactly these people “cannot be judges in their own case” as the old adage has it. (Ch. 1, p. 15)
“The over attention given to the subject (you can hardly open a popular paper without finding some comment on homosexuals and their problems) unquestionably contributes to the impression of the omnipresence of homosexuality. This is precisely the impression sought by advocates of the normality of the ‘gay’ phenomenon.” (Ch. 2, p.20)
“Is that not rather the effect of social discrimination? No. It is true that the homosexually oriented are not really considered normal by the others, but the main cause of feeling tragically different lies within. These people retain this feeling when they live in an accepting environment. It is part of their neurosis.” (Ch. 2, p. 21-22)
Religious
“Dr. van den Aardweg’s approach is especially significant for the Christian Community. He does not use any explicitly Christian concepts or theory in his interpretation of homosexuality or in his clinical response to it. Nevertheless, his book is a profound contribution to the Christian response to homosexuality.” (Paul C. Vitz, Intro, p. 11)
They [other psychologists] and Dr. van den Aardweg give important advice on how one can help the sinner who honestly wants to go and sin no more.” (Paul C. Vitz, Intro, p.12)
Good insight on how “pray away the gay” therapy doesn’t work. (Ch. 9, p. 95)
“The client sometimes wishes too compulsively to be normal, and on the basis of this, he tries to persuade himself that he has already changed. The religious homosexual may, moreover, egotistically enjoy belonging to a religious group or even being an important member of it (as the ‘convert,’ the ‘preacher’). (Ch. 9, p. 95)
“There are homosexual people who confuse their religious experiences with a psychological cure or who preach instant cures by religious conversion (“faith healing”). In my opinion, they are bound to be disillusioned. They pray and pray and pray, but ‘nothing happens to them’ as they erroneously expect. Or in other cases, they spasmodically make themselves believe thy have ‘chased away their devil.” (Ch. 9, p. 102)
Sexism
“In this respect, the so-called homosexual liberation movement travels hand in hand with the feminist movement. Both agree on the need of an overall change in male and female roles and in the man woman relationship. (Ch. 1, p. 13)
“Boys and men are, more than girls and women, hereditarily equipped with a drive to ‘social dominance,’ to exert authority in social life; they are the ‘fighters’ in the various senses of this word.” (Ch. 5, p. 55)
“And it [psychological differences in the sexes] does not say that it is unnatural to behave as if different percentages of men and women in a number of professions and functions indicates ‘discrimination,’ social injustice. It also says that there should be made clear distinctions between roles assigned to boys and girls in education. It cannot be wise, nor profitable for the society as a whole, to neglect the evident sex-linked preferences and talents for certain occupations and roles, and not to make use of the inherent sex-linked capacities and gifts.” (Ch. 5, p. 56)
“A girl reared with a somewhat contemptuous attitude toward things womanly and the female ‘role’ (‘sewing and all that sissy stuff, that’s not fir me!’) nevertheless may be impressed by other girls and women who radiate femininity and inwardly admire them. More than once I have observed that women who lash out against this ‘oppressive feminine role’ in fact feel inferior with respect to that very role. They in fact admire women who freely embrace their femininity.” (Ch. 5, p. 56)
“The sex roles are complementary, in accordance with the complementary nature of sex-linked gifts. Forced abolition of normal sex-linked behavior patterns, whether inspired by neurotic frustrations or by mistaken egalitarian philosophy, will only put unproductive stresses on the relationships between sexes and serve the psychological actualization of nobody.” (Ch. 5, p. 57)
“The father sometimes would have preferred this daughter to have been a son, a comrade, and he stimulated in her certain male roles, interests, and achievements. He overemphasized, for example, her professional performance in school or her achievement in sports and her functioning in important social roles. Understandably, somewhere deep down the girl felt misunderstood and not genuinely accepted as the person she in fact was.” (Ch. 6, p. 70)
Self-Pity
“The therapy for this condition would logically consist of making the unconscious self-pity—‘the inner complaining child’ – conscious. Thus it would lose its compulsive power over the mind.”
“Homosexuality is just a kind of neurosis. The person with this complex harbors a specific ‘self-pitying child.’ This is why Bergler could observe: ‘In his fifties, he [the homosexuality inclined man] is in his teens emotionally.” (Ch. 5, p. 51)
Smear
“Homosexuality is not a permanent sentence, if you will, to a particular lifestyle that will always be antagonistic to the heterosexual way of life and to the major institutions of our society. Homosexuals are not condemned to a way of life that alienates, separates, and restricts a person greatly.” (Paul C. Vitz, Intro, p. 10)
“Strictly speaking, then, ‘homosexuals’ or ‘homophiles’ do not exist, any more than in the animal realm; you have persons with homosexual inclinations.” (Ch. 2, p. 18)
“We should keep in mind that the word ‘homosexuality’ stands for a large variety of forms and types. For instance, there are men who feel sexually aroused by virtually every man they meet and others who are solely interested in specific types of males. In some, the homosexual feeling is continuously present in their imagination., like an obsession, while in others it appears more in fits and starts.” (Ch. 2, p. 18)
“Still another distinction: some cherish the wish for a partner for a lasting faithful relationship, others could not even desire such a thing. Between the wish and the realization, however, these people find a great gulf; a really lasting and faithful relationship is extremely rare if it ever happens. (Ch. 2, p. 19)
“Many people with this orientation are no more prepared to let themselves be deprived of their illusory feelings than alcoholics or drug addicts are to let themselves be deprived of their stimulants. (Ch. 7, p. 75)
“The slogan that homosexuality should be accepted sounds deceptively humane to many ears; some have even been brainwashed so completely as to swallow the foolishness that homosexual relationships should enjoy the same rights as normal marriage. Those who are enthusiastic about homosexual life, however, turn a blind eye to the sorrow that often goes along with it.” (Ch. 11, p. 117)
“We had better pay attention to those who may lead a homosexual lifestyle but can find no peace with it, or feel doomed to repeat, ‘I shall never be normal.’ Do not think this is a small group. When one inquires about it straightforwardly in a personal conversation, it appears that most people with this orientation are dissatisfied with it and would somehow like to change – ‘if only it were possible.’” (Ch. 1, p. 16)
Whining
“If opinions on homosexuality other than the doctrines of the homosexual liberation movement get publicity, they are commented upon condescendingly and with barely any concealed irony. Small wonder that this is not the optimum climate to further unbiased research into the causes of this condition, let alone let alone into the possibilities of its treatment, at our official scientific institutions.” (Ch.1, p. 14)
“As a rule, militant homosexuals shun an open discussion; they only want to hear that they are in the right. They turn a deaf ear to logical arguments and facts. They attack, dramatize their position, and it is clear, they are highly successful in that. (Ch. 1, pp. 15-16)
Youth
“The youngsters hardly ever realize that they have fixed a rather definitive label on themselves with this ‘self-identification’ and assigned themselves to a second-class and in fact excluded status. Some may take on a proud a proud attitude and even pose as superior to ordinary mankind, but for all their show of being perfectly content with their ‘orientation’ they inwardly realize that their being different is an inferior form of sexuality.” (Ch. 2, p. 21)
“It may be soothing to belong to a well-described minority and feel at home among similarly oriented people, free from the difficult need to keep up with the heterosexual world. The toll for this, however, is the depressing fatalism that is implicit in this newly acquired identity: ‘I am just that way.’ The young person does not think,” ‘It is true that I have occasional or regular homosexual feelings, but basically I must have been born the same as anyone else.’ No, he feels he is a different and inferior creature, who carries a doom: he views himself as tragic. Thus tragic self-labeling links up with an inferiority feeling that he has already nurtured for some time before, namely, the feeling of being a pitiful outsider.” (Ch. 2, p. 21)
“Frequently youngsters who express their probably not-yet fixated homoerotic feelings or fantasies are informed by the ‘experts’ that they are homosexuals. That may hit hard and dash whatever hopes there were. I suggest that as a preferable reaction to young people who disclose their secret feelings something like this: You may indeed feel that interest in your own sex, but it is still a question of immaturity. By nature, you are not that way. Your heterosexual nature has not yet awakened. What we have to discuss is a personality problem, your inferiority complex.” (Ch. 2, p. 22)
“He will, however, sooner or later come to the conclusion that he has landed in a completely disordered, in fact neurotic way of life. His inner state will resemble addiction in more than one respect.” (Ch. 2, p. 22)
“It is also an indication of the hereditary basis of heterosexuality that one never sees young people who are free from emotional hang-ups, inferiority complexes, and inner frustrations, in other words, well-balanced, composed young people, who feel inwardly pushed to homosexuality. Non-neurotic young people are invariably heterosexual.” (Ch. 3, p. 36)
“In other cases, beginning heterosexual interests may be blocked by emerging homophile feelings, especially if the adolescent feels frustrated in his first heterosexual love affair. Once the potentialities of the opposite sex having been fully discovered, the development is irreversible. Former ‘objects’ become simply uninteresting – and this is without a learning process imposed from the outer world, but motivated by the goal-directed and goal-seeking sex instinct itself.” (Ch. 3, p. 37)
“It is a desire for warmth and appreciation propelled by self-pity, and this age when the still diffuse sexual drive is awakening. A pathetic need for warmth may then arouse erotic fantasies of intimacy with some admired friend.” (Ch. 5, p. 58)
“A pleas for ‘acceptance of yourself’ is often a plea for childishness. The alternative, to work at yourself, is more difficult, but it is the only way to inner happiness and peace of mind.” (Chapter 8, p. 90)
“There is also a preventive effect in good sex education. Adolescents with certain types of original inferiority complexes can experience a depressing shock when being taught by such an ‘enlightened authority’ as a teacher that ‘homosexuality is inherent in the brain.’ Such nonsense nails a child to his self-doubts and can lead an undecided, underdeveloped mind in a pernicious direction. Should the young person hear, on the other hand, that homosexual feelings in adolescence are a question of a developmental emotional problem, and that genuine, inborn, homosexuality does not exist; moreover, that this orientation amounts to an inferiority complex that is susceptible to change – then the educator instills hope and points to a road on which inner growth can be resumed.” (Ch. 11, p. 118)
