CONTENT WARNING: This piece discusses themes that may upset some readers (such as Autistic and other NeuroDivergent Conversion “Therapies,” manipulation, coercion, and abuse). Reader discretion is advised.
Why do I call ABA and similar methods “Conversion Therapies”?
Because they ARE Conversion Therapies!
Just like Gay Conversion Therapy hopes to “normalize” a Queer Person so they can become cis-straight (an unrealistic goal), NeuroDivergent Conversion “Therapies” have the desired outcome of making a person as similar to their NeuroTypical peers as possible (an unrealistic and unfair goal for many of us).
Though they target different traits or “behaviors” as “undesirable” and needing to be “extinguished,” ABA/NeuroDivergent and Gay/Trans Conversion Therapy are the same and use the same methods (and were even created by the same people). So I will frequently use these terms interchangeably.
From its inception, ABA (and its principals) have been used to “convert” various groups so that they can better “fit into” the world (blaming people for struggling against systems that aren’t well suited to their needs instead of changing the environments to make them more inclusive).
Recently new groups are being targeted by this multi-billion dollar industry.
Even before formal Conversion “Therapies” were developed, this country was founded on forced conversion and compliance (with the US capitalistic and religious systems).
ABA and other forms of Conversion Therapy are about as American as you can get.
Founded in Anti-Trans and Anti-Autistic Hate
Conversion practices aren’t new. However, ABA as we know it started in the 1960s and ’70s when O. Ivar Lovaas and George A. Rekers conducted experiments (using rewards and punishments) to shape “desirable” or “normative behaviors” in two target groups (gender-nonconforming and Autistic children).
*Please see “The Feminine Boy Project” to learn more about how Lovaas and Rekers used the methods found in ABA on gender-nonconforming children, with tragic results.
A full post talking about the NeuroQueer history of ABA and other forms of conversion therapy can be found HERE if you would like to learn more about the history.
Dr. Ole Ivar Lovaas & George Rekers – Founding Fathers of ABA
Many of us already know about Lovaas, one of the early pioneers of ABA, who advocated for beating the Autism out of children because Lovaas did not see Autistic People as fully human.
Ole Ivar Lovaas went on record in a well-known interview, describing Autistic People as “Severely disturbed.”
According to Lovaas:
“You start pretty much from scratch when you work with an autistic child. You have a person in the physical sense – they have hair, a nose, and a mouth – but they are not people in the psychological sense. One way to look at the job of helping autistic kids is to see it as a matter of constructing a person.”
– O. Ivar Lovaas
Ivar Lovaas worked closely with George Rekers on many of his projects.
Lovaas has been heavily discussed (thanks to the quote above), but many people have never heard of George Rekers, and I would LOVE to change that.
George Rekers is an American psychologist and well-known anti-gay activist who has been a key figure in the conversion therapy controversy around gender-diverse youth.
Rekers is also one of the founders of the Family Research Council (declared by the HRC to be a hate group against trans and other Queer People) along with James Dobson (an American evangelical Christian author and founder of Focus on the Family).
This is why I say Autistic People who also happen to be trans are in a unique place to speak on these issues (because we’re likely to experience this type of trauma from multiple angles). We are also the main targets of the modern Conversion Therapy Industry.
Many of us have witnessed firsthand the damage that Conversion “Therapy” and using coercive methods to “build the missing pieces of a person” has done to both of our communities (since we became this industry’s primary target in the 1960s).
We see the same results with both trans and Autistic People who have been put into “normalization therapies” – trauma, PTSD, increased rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation.
These results are not limited to people who’ve experienced formal modification programs (because compliance-based programs permeate our society and many of its systems as a whole).
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