Robert Galbraith Heath, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology at Tulane University, begins an experiment on a 24-year-old male psychiatric patient in New Orleans with a history of homosexual relationships.

Using a mixture of pornography, sex work, and electric stimulation, the experiment attempts to develop a method to rewire the pleasure responses of gay men towards heterosexual desires. Heath will continue experimenting on patients at mental hospitals and the state prison for years to come.