Change hormones, change brain?

[James Brody]

The American Psych Assn. may have already passed sanctions on behavioral treatments intended to change the sexual preferences of homosexuals. Joe Wolpe found that shocking homosexuals didn't cure them, no one has bettered Wolpe's record (perhaps for reasons that Garcia understood), but pretended experts, with all kinds of methods and motives, still promise cures.

At the same time, science keeps finding new things.

Hulshoff Pol H, Cohen-Kettenisi PT, Van Haren N, Peper J, Brans R, Cahn W, Schanck H, Gooren L, & Kahn R (2006) Changing your sex changes your brain: influences of testosterone and estrogen on adult human brain structure. European Journal of Endocrinology (2006) S155- S107.

"Objective: Sex hormones are not only involved in the formation of reproductive organs, but also induce sexually-dimorphic brain development and organization. Cross-sex hormone administration to transsexuals provides a unique possibility to study the effects of sex steroids on brain morphology in young adulthood.
"Methods: Magnetic resonance brain images were made prior to, and during, cross-sex hormone treatment to study the influence of anti-androgenCestrogen treatment on brain morphology in eight young adult male-to-female transsexual human subjects and of androgen treatment in six female-to-male transsexuals.
"Results: Compared with controls, anti-androgenCestrogen treatment decreased brain volumes of male-to-female subjects towards female proportions, while androgen treatment in female-to-male subjects increased total brain and hypothalamus volumes towards male proportions.
"Conclusions: The findings suggest that, throughout life, gonadal hormones remain essential for maintaining aspects of sex-specific differences in the human brain."

Possibilities:

- The analog rather than binary nature of sexual preferences. Such preferences, like so many things, may be the result of a relatively few key influences and lots of smaller ones in loosely-connected partnerships that make up an emergent network. Plomin, Lewontin, Barabasi, and Kauffman have discussed these things. Implication: gay-1 is not the same as gay-2 is not the same as gay-3....gay-N.

- The probable but undemonstrated interactions between experience and outcomes but, given current politics, such will never be studied. In this situation, as sometimes in marriages, getting at "truth" and "fairness" isn't worth the bitching.

- Bill Hamilton's language applies: each of us is a conflicted union - genetic interests do not reconcile their differences but permeate every level of our awareness. Thus, individuals exist who 1) are labeled as homosexual but 2) dislike not just the label but their obsessions and conduct and 3) are censured at once from two directions: for wanting to change and for not changing because they just don't want to "try hard enough." (There's also the group that argues "I am, and, therefore, evolution and God had their reasons...")

- The implication that homosexuality might properly seen as a developmental disability. There ain't much - including special education - that changes whatever quirks you have, therefore, fix the problem by finding situations where your traits become assets.

JimB