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The Reparative Therapy Makeover: Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana?

December 13, 2012 by 7 Comments

In the complaint filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center against Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH), there are strange allegations made by the plaintiffs.  One of the strangest is the following from page 16 of the SPLC complaint:

orangesJONAH

In this paragraph, Alan Downing is a life coach who works for JONAH and was until recently recommended by Richard Cohen’s International Healing Foundation. Ferguson is one of the plaintiffs represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center. While some defenders of reparative therapy might think the plaintiffs are making this stuff up, the allegations sound believable to me.

The scenario in the complaint sounds like a description of the “Getting His Balls Back” technique suggested in manuals used to guide the New Warriors Training Adventure as put on by the Mankind Project.  Over the years, JONAH and NARTH leaders have recommended the New Warriors Training Adventure as a means of building masculinity and reducing same-sex attraction so it is not surprising to see the same processes used in their efforts with clients.

The Balls Back process is described in this 2002 manual (p. 12) written for NWTA by Steve Kushner:

BALLS BACK
WHEN TO USE
- He has given up or lost his power, masculinity or balls to someone and he wants it/them back
WHAT TO DO
- Place 2 tennis balls or oranges in Bad Role Player’s hands that are behind his back
- ASK HIM:
“Does he/she have your power, masculinity, balls?”
“Are you ready to take it/them back?”
(Have Bad Role Player bring hands out in front and taunt initiate)
- TELL HIM:
“The time is now, the place is here!” (emphasis added)

And then in this 2005 “Guts Guide” (Warriors call these processes “guts work”) by Martin Lassoff, the process is described in more detail.

2. Getting His Balls Back
When the initiate feels he has lost his courage, power or maleness to someone and wants to get it back, this is referred to as Getting His Balls Back. This process includes a Gauntlet.

Position a man at the end of a Gauntlet holding oranges or tennis balls (symbolizing his balls). (emphasis added)

The Gauntlet is described in the SPLC complaint as a “human chain” which the client must break through in order to grasp the oranges. This achievement is supposed to symbolize the client getting his “balls back.”

A book by Steven Segell which includes a description of a New Warriors weekend also outlines the process:

orangesJONAH2Segell

At 1:25 in this Colbert Report, Michael Ferguson described the technique for CNN (really you must watch the whole thing).

So it seems clear that the “oranges therapy” is derived from processes associated with the Mankind Project, an organization which Joseph Nicolosi, Arthur Goldberg, David Pickup and Richard Cohen have recommended.

Speaking of David Pickup, he told NBC News ”I don’t do oranges therapy, and I don’t do naked therapy.” I established last week that as a New Warrior staff member, Pickup has recommended the New Warrior Training Adventure which involves nudity. Now today, I document that the very same “oranges therapy” Pickup said he didn’t do is also recommended by reparative therapists.

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The Reparative Therapy Makeover Continues: No Naked Therapy?

December 6, 2012 by 9 Comments

Last week, NARTH’s Chris Doyle and Julie Hamilton went on the Dr Oz show to defend reparative therapy by portraying it as something other than reparative therapy. This week, NARTH’s representatives carried the makeover a little further in a NBC News article.

There is much I could comment on and may in the future, but in this post I pause to consider an astounding claim is made by David Pickup. Pickup, a one-time supervisee of Nicolosi’s and member of the Mankind Project, claims

“I can say this: I don’t do oranges therapy, and I don’t do naked therapy…”

Pickup is referring to the therapy allegedly practiced by counselors and life coaches at Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (the H used to stand for “homosexuality”). In the complaint brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center, former JONAH clients claim that they were asked to remove their clothes for various “interventions” designed to help them bolster their masculinity. There were also some creative uses for oranges in the JONAH program. In his defense against the charge that reparative therapy is all about strange techniques such as described in the JONAH lawsuit, Pickup made his statement about oranges and naked therapy.

Well, I don’t know what Pickup does in his office, but he does recommend a weekend masculinity initiation that involves nudity. For years, Pickup as been a senior staff member for the Mankind Project in Los Angeles as his NARTH 2008 bio makes clear:

David Pickup, M.A., IMF

David H. Pickup holds a Masters Degree in Psychology. He is currently registered with the California Board of Psychology as a Psych Assistant and with the California Board of Behavioral Sciences as a Marriage and Family Therapist Intern. David is interning under the supervision of Dr. Joseph Nicolosi at Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic in Encino, California. His work is centered on young boys who are struggling with Gender Identification Disorder and with adolescents and adult men who are dealing with same-sex attraction. David is a member of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists and is also a Life Coach for men working out of same-sex attraction. He operates The WorkOUT program and website, www.workoutman.org which includes individual and group coaching for men in Los Angeles and in several different countries. David speaks on Reparative Therapy and its practical applications for churches and men’s groups in the southern California area. He is also a senior staff member of The Mankind Project’s intensive weekend trainings for men in the Los Angeles area. (emphasis added)

The Mankind Project’s signature program is The New Warriors Training Adventure which invites men to get naked during part of the weekend festivities. This is well documented on their own website. They say it is optional but they strongly defend the practice (in addition to the “cock talk” portion of the program where men hold a wooden phallus and talk about their sexual history) as being an important aspect of the program.

Currently, Pickup offers discounts to the New Warriors Training Program to those who sign up for his online reorientation therapy program (only 5.99 a month!). Reparative therapists have for years viewed the New Warriors Training Adventure as being useful for same-sex attracted men because they believe SSA derives from wounded masculinity. Thus, when Pickup recommends the weekend on his reorientation therapy website, he does not simply hope his clients will have a fun weekend in the woods. The purpose is therapeutic.  While he may not be doing the naked therapy, he is recommending it.

For more on the Mankind Project, see this page.

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Man accuses employer of making him go to New Warriors Training Adventure

September 3, 2010 by 3 Comments

Interesting case.

SANTA ANA, Calif. (CN) – An attorney says he was forced to quit his job after a law firm docked his pay because he refused to go to a seminar where he feared he would be “stripped naked, not allowed to leave, be required to discuss details of his sex life, handle a wooden dildo, and potentially allow other men to touch his genitals.” The lawyer claims his supervising attorney told him that the New Warrior Training seminar would help him “have closer, stronger, and better relationships with men.”

According to the article, the lawyer bringing suit searched the Internet and found the information about the NWTA which led to his refusal. Wonder what he read?

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Mankind Project provides journalist with a “very weird weekend”

March 16, 2010 by 24 Comments

The Mankind Project has been off my radar for months. However, UK journalist Tom Mitchelson put it back on with his eyewitness account published in Saturday’s UK Mail Online. 

I first heard about the MKP’s New Warriors Training Adventure at a NARTH (National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality) conference in 2003. Various members, including then President Joe Nicolosi, were recommending it to those in attendance as a way to support healthy masculinity.  A few same-sex attracted men who tried it thought it was great and a few others thought it made no sense to be naked in the woods with other guys. New Warriors is still recommended on the NARTH website. In view of the current critiques of the sexual identity therapy framework (SITF), it is worth pointing out that the SITF discourages experiences like NWTA. More about that after I review Mitchelson’s weird weekend.

The next time I recall thinking much about MKP was when I read Chris Vogel’s Houston Press article about the suicide of Michael Scinto. You can read all of the articles on MKP and NWTA here.

For veteran NWTA watchers, these experiences will seem familiar. Mitchelson grabs your attention out of the gate:

How our man found himself with 65 naked men chanting, drumming – and screaming their rage against women to ‘reclaim’ their lost masculinity…

The temperature has plunged to freezing. I am deep in a remote English woodland outside Exeter.

I have been blindfolded and I am standing, holding hands, with a long line of men – who, until about 24 hours ago, I’d never met before.

Together, we are stumbling through the scrub as beating tribal drums guide our way. Oh yes, and we are naked. Totally naked.

Abruptly, my blindfold is ripped off and I see we have been led to a shadowy candle-lit room. There are about 65 of us in a double horseshoe formation.

This is a ceremony where we are to become ‘new warriors’. And then the dancing begins.

I wish I were somewhere else. Anywhere else. So why on earth am I here?

Why indeed? On its website, MKP proclaims:

We’re redefining mature masculinity for the 21st Century – and we want your help!

Along the way Mitchelson seems amused that the NWTA is viewed as a path to redefined masculinity.

A leader holding a wooden staff decorated with feathers rambles on about the mission of the weekend, using the pompous jargon that would later become very familiar: words like ‘shadow’, ‘warriors’, ‘masculine’, ‘commitment’ and ‘responsibility’.

He tells us how to be a man. It’s hard to take from a man wearing face paint, carrying a feathered stick.

Whatever healthy masculinity is, it seems to involve making the world into a giant man-cave, free from those pesky women.

Everything I read from them is baffling non-speak. They claim the weekend is a ‘process of initiation and self-examination that is crucial to the development of a healthy and mature male self’.

They claim they help move men away from the ‘comforting embrace’ of their mother – something, on the face of it, some wives might even encourage. Then I am told I will ‘confront’ my ‘dependence on women’, to help me move into the ‘masculine kingdom’.

The fun begins when they arrive at the camp. [Read more...]

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Writer Journeys into Manhood undercover

August 27, 2009 by 2 Comments

According to a Salt Lake City newspaper, writer Ted Cox wanted to know what an ex-gay program was like so he signed up for a Journey into Manhood weekend in Utah. He planned to write a story about it but was derailed by JIM founder Rich Wyler.

Cox, a former Mormon, is a heterosexual who, earlier this year, pretended to be gay in order to attend a JiM workshop for men wanting to “overcome same-sex attractions.”

Upon learning of Cox’s story proposal, JiM founder and life coach Rich Wyler quickly intervened, urging City Weekly not to run Cox’s story because Cox signed a confidentiality agreement barring him from speaking about the weekend. City Weekly decided not to publish Cox’s proposed story but rather to ask Cox why he went undercover to get the story.

Richard Cohen got Ted interested in the ex-gay world.

This started in 2007, after I saw a segment on the Daily Show where the correspondent interviewed Richard Cohen, who is a pretty infamous ex-gay therapist, and I was surprised … that they didn’t at all delve into the religious motivation behind the ex-gay movement.

I found local ministries, and I’ve attended different support groups. I’ve also gone to a couple of conferences that deal with the ex-gay movement. All of it is a look of what is going on, who goes to these things, and do they work—which is, of course, the really big question.

The article doesn’t reveal much more but the agreement that Cox signed is reproduced at the link above. This seems much like the ManKind Project confidentiality agreement. If what we reported earlier this week is accurate, MKP may be doing away with their confidentiality agreement. Will JiM follow suit? JiM grew out of MKP’s NWTA and apparently uses some of the same processes, without the nudity.

C’mon Rich let him publish his article. Co-write it with him. MKP says they are letting the sunshine in, how about little brother JiM?

Speaking of the Daily Show with Richard Cohen, Crooks and Liars has it…

Update: I spoke to Ted Cox by phone earlier today. He declined to discuss the JiM weekend but he did say on the record that he did not become aware of the confidentiality agreement until after he had paid a non-refundable deposit and paid for a non-refundable plane ticket. Then he was given the option of signing or not attending and not getting any money in refund.

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