To over-simplify, this states that trans women are either

a) Homosexual men trying to trick straight men into having sex.

b) Heterosexual men with a misdirected sex target problem

and also

c) All Transsexuals habitually lie.

The theory is unfalsifiable. Any testimony by patients either confirms a) or b) directly, or confirms c) if in contradiction.

There are a number of difficulties with the theory though.

1) It doesn’t account for measured neurological anatomical differences;

2) it doesn’t account for Trans men;

3) the tests for autogynephilia on Trans women, when applied to the usual kind, give the same results; and finally,

4) the plethysmograph tests on post-operative women give different results from the tests on the usual kind – but the same as for women who have had genital reconstruction after cancer treatment etc. They screwed up the control group in a blatantly obvious way.

All of this – the terminology, the testing, the theory itself – is based on the a priori axiom that Trans women are men. If that axiom is discarded, and that treated as a hypothesis to be tested rather than accepted unquestioningly, quite a different picture emerges.

Fortunately this is becoming known, and AGP theory as a universal explanation for all Transsexuals without exception – rather than for a small proportion – is now no longer flavour-of-the-month.

I currently live in St Louis and I’m sure such a school would be welcome by many here 😉

Behavior therapists

psychoanalytic therapists

analytic therapists

I think I have a pretty good idea what “Reparative” Therapist do though.

“Are you going to investigate confirmation bias in gay-affirming research and studies?”

Can you provide some examples of the research and studies you believe should be examined for confirmation bias?

We assessed the attributional style of psychoanalysts, behavior therapists, and nontherapists by using a mail survey. Respondents listed causal explanations for three hypothetical problems experienced by either themselves, their friends, or their clients. Results indicated that [a] psychoanalysts gave more dispositional explanations than situational explanations, whereas the reverse was true for behavior therapists and nontherapists; [b] psychoanalysts gave psychological explanations for problems hypothetically experienced by their friends or clients, but physical explanations for the same problems hypothetically experienced by themselves; and [c] psychoanalysts holding medical degrees gave fewer psychological attributions and more physical attributions than behavior therapists or psychoanalysts with doctorate degrees.

They summarize:

The therapist’s orientation and training may exert a bias on the way common problems are explained, on the locus of perceived sources of change, and consequently, on the strategies utilized to effect change. For psychoanalytic therapists, the presence of an attributional bias might be interpreted as a source of concern; because they use different standards to judge themselves and their clients, an undesirable psychoanalytic distance may be created. Since there is some evidence that empathy tends to increase situational attributions and reduce actor/observer differences (cf. Regan & Totten, 1975), attempts to reaffirm empathy as an essential ingredient in the client-therapist relationship might offer the best antidote to undesirable therapeutic biases.

From: http://www.eliot.smith.socialpsychology.org/pdf/jccp1986.pdf

Might have to hit reload/refresh to get the PDF.