Robert Spitzer, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University, said he began his study as a skeptic - believing, as major mental health organizations do, that sexual orientation cannot be changed, and attempts to do so can even cause harm.īut Spitzer's study, which has not yet been published or reviewed, seems to indicate otherwise. Critics, though, say the study's subjects may be deluding themselves and that the subject group was scientifically invalid because many of them were referred by anti-gay religious groups.ĭr. Can gay men and women become heterosexual?Ī controversial new study says yes - if they really want to.