ABSTRACT
Based on learning theory principles, aversion therapy was introduced during the 1960s, as a psychiatric procedure for deconditioning undesirable behaviour (Rachman and Teasdale, 1969). Most notoriously it was adopted in the ‘treatment’ of male homosexuals to whom electric shocks were administered while they were presented with erotic pictures of males. Less controversially it has also been explored in relation to smoking, gambling and alcoholism, for example. In the case of alcoholism, the aversive stimulus has typically been provided by prescribing the patient a drug, usually disulfiram (Antabuse), which induces nausea in reaction to alcohol intake. The efficacy of aversion therapy proved far more limited than its pioneers expected but it continues to be widely used as one technique among many, having been incorporated into cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). With the growing acceptance of homosexuality in western cultures after 1970, and the removal of homosexuality from the DMSI, it has long ceased to be used in that context. Ironically the bad public image aversion therapy acquired was in no small part due to its early use in attempting to ‘cure’ gay men, leading many people to become averse to aversion therapy (see Sansweet, 1975, for an early attack). Aversion therapy is a particular version of the more general approach known as behaviour therapy (Eysenck and Rachman, 1964).
