Developmental and clinical psychologist Diane Ehrensaft told the Psychiatric Times, "The mental health profession has been consistently doing harm to children who are not gender normal, and they need to retrain." Society and culture
Diagnostic dispute
Pickstone-Taylor has called Zucker and Bradleys therapeutic intervention "something disturbingly close to reparative therapy for homosexuals." Other academics, such as Maddux et al., have also compared it to such therapy. They argue that the goal is preventing a transgender identity because reparative therapy is believed to reduce the chances of adult GD, "which Zucker and Bradley characterize as undesirable. "Author Phyllis Burke wrote, "The diagnosis of GID in children, as supported by Zucker and Bradley, is simply child abuse." Zucker dismisses Burkes book as "simplistic" and "not particularly illuminating;" and journalist Stephanie Wilkinson said Zucker characterized Burkes book as "the work of a journalist whose views shouldnt be put into the same camp as those of scientists like Richard Green or himself. "Critics argue that the GIDC diagnosis was a backdoor maneuver to replace homosexuality in the DSM; Zucker and Robert Spitzer counter that the GIDC inclusion was based on "expert consensus," which is "the same mechanism that led to the introduction of many new psychiatric diagnoses, including those for which systematic field trials were not available when the DSM-III was published."
This, as far as we know, is best achieved by providing a relationship between husband and wife exemplifying these respective roles. "In 1968, Green published "Childhood Cross-Gender Identification", a paper reviewing the therapy of nine AMAB children who were younger than 8 and "clearly prepubertal". The first six were from the collaborative papers between Green and Money, the last 3 were from Robert Stoller. Citing the failure of attempts to "cure" adult trans women, he reported early diagnosis and treatment may be effective in preventing manifestations of adulthood cross-gender identification. The stated goals of family therapy are for "for the husband and wife to gain some perspective on the second class citizen of the husband and of the significance of their unbalanced roles in shaping their sons personality. Additional focus is on the masculinity-inhibiting of mothers anxiety over her sons healthy aggression and her greater comfort with what to her is his less threatening behavior. "Another early researcher was George Alan Rekers, who later became an administrator at NARTH, who focused his 1972 doctoral research on the treatment of feminine boys. In this work, Rekers describes a litany of feminine behaviours which he catalogues including: feminine posture, gait, arm and hand gestures, feminine inflection in speech, as well as interest in feminine clothing, games and conversation topics.