- An Open Letter Reply to Dr. Stan Grof - March 28, 2025
- Queering Psychedelics: An Introduction - August 7, 2024
- 10 Calls to Action: Toward an LGBTQ-Affirmative Psychedelic Therapy - October 17, 2019
- An Open Letter Reply to Dr. Stan Grof - March 28, 2025
- “Please Write Up Your Work!”: Laura Archera Huxley as a Psychedelic Pioneer - December 2, 2020
- Another Aspect of Reality: Maria Nys Huxley’s Influence on Psychedelic History - November 25, 2020
- An Open Letter Reply to Dr. Stan Grof - March 28, 2025
- The Revolution Will Not Be Psychologized: Psychedelics’ Potential for Systemic Change - July 3, 2020
- An Open Letter Reply to Dr. Stan Grof - March 28, 2025
- Can Psychedelics Reveal Memories of Sexual Abuse? - August 4, 2020
- Embodied Healing: A Personal Perspective on Resolving Trauma with Psychedelics - January 30, 2019
- An Open Letter Reply to Dr. Stan Grof - March 28, 2025
- Should Psychedelic Therapists Have First-hand Experience with Psychedelics? - August 21, 2019
Last week, Dr. Stan Grof, a giant in the field of psychedelic research, published an open letter to the worldwide community addressing his writings on using psychedelics like LSD to treat LGBTQIA+ people. In an unsigned preface, MAPS apologized for publishing homophobic content and noted that these “passages have been removed from the republication of Stan’s books.” We commend them for this action.
This public statement was anticipated. Over a year ago, we (Alex Belser and Andrea Ens) approached Stan Grof with our concerns and met with him, Brigitte Grof, and two other individuals. At the time, we presented him with a summary of the homophobia in his writings, and requested that he reckon with this and issue a public apology.
We invite Dr. Grof to continue this conversation and invite members of the field to reflect on whether long-disproven claims about queer people may still be present in our work.
However, what Dr. Grof (who is a personal hero of ours) presented was woefully inadequate. It misstates the time frame of his statements, suggesting they were all much older than they are. It offers only a conditional (non-)apology, blaming readers for being ‘confused’ rather than accepting responsibility. And it leaves the door open to Grof’s work being used in conversion therapy. We invite Dr. Grof to continue this conversation and invite members of the field to reflect on whether long-disproven claims about queer people may still be present in our work. Allow us to explain.
This is not merely a case of outdated language that went unaddressed. Grof had a fully developed theory of homosexuality, referring to it as:
- a “sexual deviation” (Grof, 2009, Chapter 4);
- a “sexual disturbance” (Grof, 2000, p. 115);
- a “psychopathological syndrome” (Grof, 2009, Chapter 4);
- a “sexual pathology” (Grof, 1988, p. 58); and
- an “emotional disorder” (Grof, 1988, p. 58).
In LSD: Doorway to the Numinous (2009) and earlier works, Grof explicitly classifies homosexuality as a sexual deviation. He writes that “sexual deviations (sadomasochism, male homosexuality, drinking of urine and eating of feces)” (Chapter 4) result from turbulent birth experiences. As a closeted gay teenager in the 1990s, I (Belser) read Grof’s books. I was fascinated by his accounts of LSD visions and, frankly, terrified by his diagnosis of my own sick, deviant condition.
What does Grof write about how he treated “male homosexuals”? Grof blends traditional psychoanalytic theory with his own transpersonal ideas. He traces male homosexuality to “an unfinished gestalt of a previous incarnation as a female,” suggesting that we look to past lives to understand why someone is gay. He writes that male homosexuality is rooted in “castration fears” or a “life-threatening vagina dentata,” reprising a common misogynist psychoanalytic trope (Grof, 2000, p. 116; Grof, 1985, p. 220). Grof also advances postwar psychiatric theories imagining “absence or emotional distance” from one’s father as a root cause of male homosexuality (Grof, 2000 p. 116). He states that many gay men only “resorted to homosexual activities after repeated frustrating experiences with women” (Grof, 2000, p. 116). Regarding gay sex, he says that the “passive homosexual role” (what we might call “bottoming”) stems from “deep unconscious identification with the delivering mother.” Grof describes male “anal intercourse” as “sadomasochistic” (Grof, 2000, p. 116).
By contrast, Grof portrays lesbianism as less dire and more easily remedied. He categorizes “female homosexuality” as a “psychopathological syndrome” next to “manic symptomatology” and “exhibitionism” (Grof, 2009, Chapter 4). For Grof, “female homosexuality” is an emotional disorder caused by insufficient mother love. He ascribes it to “a period of serious emotional deprivation in infancy,” suggesting that once women realize they simply need nonsexual physical affection, their “homosexual fears” would disappear (Grof, 1985, p. 220). Needless to say, no credible evidence supports these claims. Grof’s stance was that homosexuality was a degraded psychological position requiring “healing” through psychedelic treatment.
When I (Belser) have spoken about psychedelic conversion therapy at conferences, people often doubt that Grof practiced it, as they know him to be a kind and well-meaning person. This comports with my own experiences with the man. Yet conversion therapy need not be malicious—it is often carried out by those believing they are helping, but who are blinded by their own internalized homophobia.
This is evident as recently as 2009 in his book, LSD: Doorway to the Numinous. Grof writes about three male patients he treated, Peter, Otto, and Richard, who all presented with distress that they were gay. A young man named Richard, for example, after a series of LSD therapy sessions with Grof, went from being “involved in homosexual activities in which he always played the passive role” to being “able to form an erotic relationship with a woman and have the first heterosexual intercourse of his life” (Chapter 3). In all three cases, which he presents as clinical success stories, Grof suggests his LSD treatment led to resolution of homosexual concerns or abatement of homosexual tendencies.
Grof also recounts the experience of a lesbian woman, Flora. After a particularly intense LSD session, Grof states, “To my great surprise, this session resulted in an astounding therapeutic breakthrough…She started even to experiment with heterosexual relations for the first time in her life and eventually got married. However, her sexual adjustment was not good; she was capable of intercourse, but found it unpleasant and painful” (Grof, 1988, p. 249). Flora eventually left the marriage, felt less guilt about her sexual desires, and returned to her lesbian relationship, though Grof lamented more LSD sessions could not be pursued to help her make “further progress” (p. 249). Grof’s writings are replete with gay conversion narratives that treat gay and lesbian identities as “emotional disorders” curable through psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.
Some argue that Grof’s writings must be read against psychiatry’s and psychoanalysis’s earlier era, when homosexuality was universally pathologized. Indeed, in his letter from last week, Grof acknowledges that “several of my published writings discuss homosexuality as a psychological disorder. My early writings … were written in a time when many if not most cultures criminalized same-gender behaviors.” Yet homosexuality was removed from the list of psychiatric disorders by the American Psychiatric Association in 1973. Our concerns regard Grof’s works published after 2000—long after psychiatry had officially depathologized homosexuality.
Grof states, “I neglected to publicly correct these statements until now,” implying they were all from his “early writings,” but this fails to reflect that much of this content appears in his 21st-century publications. The case of Richard, for example, was published a full 34 years after homosexuality was removed by the APA. How are we to square Grof’s affirming statement last week—“I have long considered same-gender attraction a healthy expression of human sexuality”—with his 2009 writings, where he classified homosexuality as a “sexual deviation” and a “psychopathological syndrome” and touted gay conversion narratives?
Grof addressed “fear of becoming homosexual” as the third most common concern among his LSD therapy patients. He assured them psychedelics would not trigger a “homosexual transformation” and would instead “ultimately strengthen the sense of one’s own sexual identity” (Grof, 1980/2008, p. 132), implicitly, a heterosexual identity.
Grof’s claim last week that he was merely reassuring patients that psychedelics “do not change one’s authentic nature” amounts to rhetorical sleight of hand. In therapy, his “assurance” to a patient conveys that LSD will not increase a patient’s homosexuality—offering no genuine affirmation of same-gender attraction. Rather than challenging social prejudice, his statement reaffirms it, recasting homosexuality as something to be feared or overcome.
Although Grof now says he considers same-gender attraction a healthy expression of sexuality, several omissions and rhetorical choices undermine this overture:
- Conditional Non-Apology. Grof’s apology begins with “If” as in “If these writings caused confusion or pain…,” which puts the onus on harmed individuals to prove their suffering. It is a disavowal of harm, rather than taking unequivocal responsibility.
- Framing Harm as “Confusion.” Referring to “confusion” experienced by readers suggests they misunderstood his writings, rather than acknowledging the texts themselves contained harmful pathologizations.
- Reassuring Only Heterosexual Patients. Grof cites his reassurance to patients worried about “becoming homosexual,” as if that were a neutral act. There is no parallel reassurance offered to gay or lesbian individuals that a psychedelic session would not make them straight. This asymmetry indicates a deeper bias.
- No Real Reckoning. While passages will now be removed from new editions, there is little explanation of why the original text was wrong. Essentially, the harmful content disappears from newer prints without any real reckoning or public apology.
Conversion Therapy Implications Conversion therapy—any practice aiming to alter someone’s sexual orientation from gay to straight or to make them identify as the gender they were assigned at birth—hinges on the belief that same-gender attraction is disordered. By repeatedly describing homosexuality as a pathology that might be resolved, and by presenting case studies of “converting” a “passive” homosexual man and a lesbian to heterosexuality, Grof’s work meets standard definitions of conversion therapy. His assurances that psychedelics would “ultimately strengthen” a heterosexual orientation while mitigating “homosexual fears” mirrors conversion therapy rhetoric. Many LGBTQ+ individuals have been harmed by therapists who used altered states to “treat” queerness as an illness.
Grof’s work, as it stands, could be used as a basis for the incorporation of psychedelics into conversion therapies in the present day. Indeed, a challenge to Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, and if plaintiffs prevail, psychedelic conversion therapy could be allowed again in all fifty states (Reuters, 2025, March 10).
Community Accountability and Next Steps The larger psychedelic and mental health communities must reckon with how Grof’s texts—however foundational in other respects—contain ideas that directly negate the validity of LGBTQ+ identities.
To take steps, we have written a Consensus Statement Condemning Psychedelic Conversion Therapy and Suggestions for Addressing Ongoing Harms Against LGBTQIA+ People in Psychedelic Research and Therapy.
Practitioners, scientists, scholars and representatives from research and service organizations are invited to join as signatories to this Consensus Statement using the form here.
Conclusion Dr. Stanislav Grof’s work remains influential; his contributions to transpersonal psychology and our understanding of non-ordinary states are significant. Nonetheless, his portrayal of homosexuality as deviant, disordered, and curable contradicts modern understandings of LGBTQ+ identity and ethical mental health practice.
It is our collective responsibility—researchers, therapists, educators, and community members—to ensure the future of psychedelic-assisted therapy categorically rejects the notion that queerness is pathological.
Although he has acknowledged these earlier writings, and has worked with many gay and lesbian individuals in various trainings, his recent Open Letter does not adequately confront the depth of the harm done or the necessity of fully renouncing homophobia (Grof, 2000, p. 116). It is our collective responsibility—researchers, therapists, educators, and community members—to ensure the future of psychedelic-assisted therapy categorically rejects the notion that queerness is pathological. We owe this to those who have been burdened by the harms of conversion therapy: to speak plainly, apologize without reservation, and commit to affirming care.
Yet, as we hold Grof accountable for holding homophobic beliefs well into his lengthy career, we must also confront our own discomfort in acknowledging that a once-lionized figure could both shape an entire field in profound ways and cause real harm. Our reluctance to see him in his full complexity may reflect our own disowned biases and harmful impulses. Only by holding this complexity with honesty, humility, and courage can we foster a more just future in psychedelic medicine and practice.
With conviction and hope for healing.
Please cite to this Open Letter Reply as follows:
Belser, A. B., Ens, A., Brennan, W., Goldpaugh, D. D., Guss, J. (2025, March 28). An Open Letter Reply to Dr. Stan Grof. Chacruna Institute. https://chacruna.net/an-open-letter-reply-to-dr-stan-grof/. Also published on OPEN Foundation. https://open-foundation.org/an-open-letter-reply-to-dr-stan-grof/.
References
Grof, S. (1980/2008). LSD psychotherapy. Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Kindle Edition.
Grof, S. (1985). Beyond the brain: Birth, death, and transcendence in psychotherapy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Grof, S. (1988). Modern Consciousness Research and Human Survival. In Grof, S., & Valier, M. L. (Eds.). Human survival and consciousness evolution. SUNY Press.
Grof, S. (1988). The adventure of self-discovery: Dimensions of consciousness and new perspectives in psychotherapy and inner exploration. Suny Press.
Grof, S. (2000). Psychology of the future: Lessons from modern consciousness research. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Grof, S. (2009). LSD: Doorway to the numinous: The groundbreaking psychedelic research into realms of the human unconscious. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press.
Reuters. (2025, March 10). U.S. Supreme Court to hear challenge to Colorado gay conversion therapy ban. Reuters. (2025, March 10). U.S. Supreme Court to hear challenge to Colorado gay conversion therapy ban. https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-hear-challenge-colorado-gay-conversion-therapy-ban-2025-03-10
Art by Mulinga.
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