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Usable Guilt. What of cures? Psychiatrist Bergler takes his own profession to task for having been, in the past, too pessimistic. It can effect cures in 90% of cases, he insists, provided that analyst and patient are willing to take the tremendous time and effort to get to the root of the difficulty. By "cure" Bergler does not mean making a guilty homosexual proud of his perversion, but changing his character and, among other things, leading him to normal sexual enjoyment.
But Bergler advises analysts not to attempt the impossible, and suggests these criteria by which they can judge whether a prospective patient offers reasonable hope of cure: he must have inner guilt feelings that can be put to use in treatment; he must accept the treatment voluntarily and actively want to change; he must give up his habit of using homosexuality as a weapon against his family, which (unconsciously) he always hates. The analyst must not begin by attacking the homosexuality head on—or the patient will at once cry that he is being persecuted. Yet the analyst must convince him that his self-damaging tendencies will engulf his whole personality, if they have not already done so. There are, says Bergler, no "healthy homosexuals."