American Psychological Association responds to “external organizations”
The American Psychological Association has issued a call for nominations titled: Call for Nominations for the Board of Director’s Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation. The charge of the Task Force is threefold:
(1) To revise and update the APA resolution Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation (1997);
(2) To generate a report that includes the following:
(a) The appropriate application of affirmative therapeutic interventions for children and adolescents who present a desire to change either their sexual orientation or their behavioral expression of their sexual orientation, or both, or whose guardian expresses a desire for the minor to change;
(b) The appropriate application of affirmative therapeutic interventions for adults who present a desire to change their sexual orientation or their behavioral expression of their sexual orientation, or both;
(c) The presence of adolescent inpatient facilities that offer coercive treatment designed to change sexual orientation or the behavioral expression of sexual orientation;
(d) Education, training, and research issues as they pertain to such therapeutic interventions;
(e) Recommendations regarding treatment protocols that promote stereotyped gender normative behavior to mitigate behaviors that are perceived to be indicators that a child will develop a homosexual orientation in adolescence and adulthood;
(3) To inform the Association’s response to groups that promote treatments to change sexual orientation or its behavioral expression and to support public policy that furthers affirmative therapeutic interventions.
Why convene a task force?
The call for nominations refers to a need to revise the APA guidelines on therapeutic responses and to “research and scholarship” relating to conversion therapy. What I think is amazing is this lenghty sentence:
Several external organizations have recommended that APA update its policy, because of their concerns about the continued visibility of reparative therapy practitioners and treatment facilities and about the role of advocacy for reparative theory in attempts to shape public opinion about the nature of sexual orientation and to support an anti-gay activist role in legislative and judicial arenas.
I wonder which extermal organizations did the recommending? I wonder what they want the APA to say?
I know of several individuals that have asked the APA to consider the need for guidelines when religion and sexuality conflict. However, I do not see this issue in the call for nominations. I hope there will not be a move to prohibit sexual identity therapy.
UPDATE: 2/23/07 - Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink interviewed APA’s Clinton Anderson who identified PFLAG and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force as two groups who recommended that the APA review their policies. This was a short report and so I understand my concerns over sexual identity therapy could be fully articulated. As any regular reader of this blog will know, I am not an apologist for reparative therapy but I am concerned that advocacy groups can move the APA to form a task force to craft scientific policy for political use.
Once this committee’s work is done, the APA will be opposed to any efforts to live consistently with conservative religion in matters of sexuality.
Sandy,
I caution you not to adopt a victim mentality. It may well be that the APA instead adopts protocols for ethical treatment and I’m sure we would all welcome that change.
The APA currently has standards for gays and lesbians but little to no guidance when there are conflicts between religious values and sexuality. If the call for nominations indicated that the committee was charged to speak to this issue, I would be less concerned. However, despite the fact that the APA has been requested to address this issue, they have not. Instead they convene a committee at the behest of advocacy groups for the purpose of advocacy needs. This does not seem like a science based efforts to me and so I am concerned that the result will not be science based.
The APA has thus far been well ahead of the tide when it comes to advocating for the rights of gay and lesbian individuals - following science when the science was not popular. For example, removing gay/lesbian individuals from the DSM in the mid-70s. It was a move of destigmatizing a population that has no mental disorder, and removing it was unpopular (thus often politicized) but the right thing to do from a scientific perspective.
I agree with Warren that when religious values and sexuality conflict, there are no specific guidelines. Although, I hope there need not be. There should be the expectation that when you see a person of science, what you receive will be unbiased and based in that science.
Otherwise, you are not a psychologist…but a religious counselor? If you claim to follow science, it is only ethical to those who seek you, that you hold to this.
I expect that the APA will do a fine job in doing what needs to be done. Warren, and just so you know, taking the time to listen to groups which support the basic civil rights of all citizens hardly seems contradictory to a scientifically based solution. Afterall, the APA has been on board with the largest scientific organizations in the country - the AMA, etc..whereas NARTH, Focus on the Family, etc…have so often strayed from science or the reporting of it, that they jeopardize ever reclaiming credibility.
If they ever had it to begin with.
Given how conversion therapy has been making news lately (Love In Action’s teen Refuge program, accusations of abuse within some Exodus ministries, Ted Haggard’s “miraculous” 3-week conversion, the debate on this blog about what “ex-gay” means) I don’t think it is unreasonable for the APA to be asked to review its stance on the matter. Nor do I think it is unreasonable for the APA to say “yes, we should review this matter.”
As to the concerns about religion and sexuality, perhaps that is something you could recommend that the committee review as well.
There should be the expectation that when you see a person of science, what you receive will be unbiased and based in that science.
Otherwise, you are not a psychologist…but a religious counselor?
I would be interested in hearing Warren and David’s opinion about this statement.
Bias cuts both ways. It seems biased to assume one has no bias. The most scientific answer is we don’t know how flexible sexual attractions might be for any given individual. After assessment, we can make educated guesses but it is not scientific to go beyond the data.
Gordo,
Thanks for the invitation. You may be aware of psychology’s long skepticism and perhaps outright hostility toward traditional faiths.
I have argued that such a bias has long been unacknolwedged and is diametrically opposed to the notion of psychology as a science. One need not be a person of faith to understand its highly adaptive nature and find plenty of evidence for it in culture, history and more recently in the social sciences.
That being said, I have concerns with the paragraph you cite and with the mythology of psychology as an unbiased science. It is not now nor has it ever been.
The social sciences generally are very weak examples of science. They are more theory and deduction without any rigorous methodology applied to clinical care (once licensed there are a wide range of theoretically sound but scientifically unproven interventions you are allowed to practice).
Since it is a weak science at best, it is especially vulnerable to bias errors in it’s theoreticians, researchers and advocacy groups.
Warren and David -
Of course everyone has biases…there are not exceptions to that. However, how we behave in response to those internal thoughts/beliefs can be somewhat regulated by guidelines. Attempting to create a consistent profession is admirable, although likely not attainable.
Social sciences are somewhat weak in “science,” however, saying this - we have to have people at least willing to sign up to following the outcomes of the studies we do have.
That seems a particular difficulty for individuals who believe that their faith can and should override professional guidelines and established ethics of practice.
Be a person of faith (I am one of them), but give it your best not to use it as a prescriptive compass. Use things as well rooted in study as you possibly can. Yes, these can be weak…but they are certainly stronger science that an interpretation of an ancient text that you believe indicates that a behavior is a sin.
Does the APA = American Political Association…
Link: CitizenLink: Gay Pressure Threatens Counseling. Under pressure from homosexual activists, the American Psychological Association (APA) plans to re-examine its policy on therapy for gay men and women seeking change. At least two homosexual groups-…
Jag - What you are saying sounds very much like our sexual identity therapy framework.
Randy - Hey Randy, nice to have you stop by. I linked to the Citizen Link article in the post above.
I should note that I was not completely accurate when I said the APA did not refer to research - indeed in the call for nominations they did. However, I know that research pretty well and I cannot see any studies that will allow much of a statement regarding reorientation therapy — unless they are going to say that (we don’t know enough and so let’s research some more before we give advocacy groups ammo they want).
I love the term “activist” or “advocacy” groups being used in a negative way….what are these homosexual activist groups advocating for? equal rights?
please…
is that soo bad?
[…] research on abortion and mental health outcomes. In contrast to the more public process used by the APA to appoint the task force on sexual orientation responses, the APA did not consult the membership for nominations. The APA reached back to partially […]
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