You are here: Home / Archives for mark yarhouse

Lifesitenews article: An exercise in confirmation bias

March 23, 2010 by 26 Comments

Yesterday, Lifesitenews published an article complaining about me. Many of the complains are recycled from Peter LaBarbera’s website and a OneNewsNow article. I addressed those criticisms here and here. Mark Yarhouse also did so on the SIT Framework website. Beyond rehashing LaBarbera’s issues, I think the article reflects poorly on Lifesitenews. Let’s start with their characterization of how my peers have been reacting to my work. Reporter Matthew Hoffman wrote:

Throckmorton’s defection from the ex-gay movement has been met with condemnation by Evangelicals. “Though he works for an evangelical institution, Pennsylvania-based Grove City College, which advertises itself on faith-based websites as ‘authentically Christian,’ Warren promotes a new, morally neutral paradigm on homosexuality that affirms people’s ‘Sexual Identity’ according to their feelings (and comfort level with same),” laments Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH).

Evangelicals? Let’s count how many condemning evangelicals are quoted by LSN. If you count Michael Glatze, two people are quoted as complaining about my views, the other one being Peter LaBarbera. My reason for hedging on Glatze is that he began his ex-gay journey as a member of the LDS church and is listed as an “Executive Assistant” at the Buddhist inspired Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado, which, according to an article written by Glatze in 2009, is a welcoming place for gays and lesbians.

Rather than reporting some broad evangelical condemnation of my work, the article repeats the criticisms of Peter LaBarbera. I noted to Mr. Hoffman when I declined his interview (more about that shortly), that I am on the National Advisory Board for the American Association of Christian Counselors (as is Mark Yarhouse) and that they paid Mark and me to present a half-day workshop at the 2007 conference on how to apply the sexual identity therapy framework. By any definition, the AACC would be considered an evangelical organization. Mr. Hoffman says that I am under fire from evangelicals and yet only quotes one, maybe two. At the same time, he ignored evidence that my views are promoted within a much larger, more mainstream evangelical organization (not to mention several others he could have consulted).

As an aside, it is curious that Mr. LaBarbera has not included the AACC in his crusade. The AACC still promotes the SITF via the tapes they sell of the pre-conference workshop. The SITF was featured in the AACC magazine in 2007 via an invited article by Mark Yarhouse. Perhaps, the AACC will be next.

When I declined the interview, I pointed out to Mr. Hoffman that the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) also claims to value client self-determination. I sent Mr. Hoffman a link to my recent post, “Is NARTH the next target?” which notes that Joseph Nicolosi says, on the NARTH website, that he provides gay affirmative therapy to some of his clients. NARTH is mentioned favorably at least 46 times on Peter LaBarbera’s website. I also sent a link to a YouTube video where Dr. Nicolosi says this about his practice:

The therapeutic approach is always positive. In fact, to be honest with you we never tell our clients not to have homosexual activity. If they want to do it, let them do it. It’s up to them. Our job is to help them understand what they learned from it. When a client comes in to me and says, ‘I had gay sex last night.’ My only question to him is, ‘What was going on with you just before you decided to act out? What was your psychological state of mind that made you want…?’ That’s where the lesson is. So we don’t tell clients not to act out. They can act out, but every time they do act out, it’s an opportunity to learn something about themselves.

Given that Mr. Hoffman mentions my movement away from NARTH’s emphasis on reorientation, it would have reasonable and responsible for him to mention that NARTH holds to a view of client self-determination that is arguably more permissive than my own. For instance, in the SITF, if a client seeks celibacy or monogamy, we advocate working with clients to avoid contexts which could elicit undesired behavior.

Mr. Hoffman is correct that I changed my mind about an interview with him, but failed to completely describe the circumstances, saying

After agreeing to an email interview with LifeSiteNews, Dr. Throckmorton refused to answer the questions submitted, claiming they were “slanted.” The questions sent to Dr. Throckmorton, are available at this link.

In fact, I declined his original request. After thinking it over, I asked to see the questions he wanted to ask. I did not agree to an interview although he may have thought that I did since I asked to see the questions. Once I read the questions, which he posted, I decided there was little chance for a fair representation of my views. For instance, I asked Mr. Hoffman how he formed this question (#3 in his list):

3. In a recent article you defended the thesis that sexual orientation is biologically determined in the womb, by hormonal deficiencies. Do you now believe that homosexual orientation is immutable?

I wrote to ask where I “defended the thesis that sexual orientation is biologically determined in the womb, by hormonal deficiencies.” He then wrote back citing this article in Uganda’s The Independent and quoted this section:

However, we do not know this to be the case. Most researchers around the world agree that there is no consensus about the causes of any given person’s sexual orientation. While it seems unlikely that there is one biological or genetic cause for all homosexuals, there are data which suggest that genetic and hormonal factors during pre-natal development have some impact on our desires, in different ways for different people.

In the email, Mr. Hoffman explained:

Perhaps I overstated your position slightly. You are suggesting
apparently that hormonal and genetic factors in the womb contribute to the phenomenon. Please consider my question amended to that effect.

I believe he did more than slightly overstate my position. His original question slanted my plainly stated views. That was enough for me to stick with my decision not to do an interview.

Currently, LSN is lamenting exclusion from a mainstream Catholic news source, Zenit. I know nothing of the specific issues but it relates to criticisms of LSN’s reporting. I can say after this experience, that I will not accept what I read there at face value. Perhaps in the zeal to promote a certain point of view, LSN’s reporting is skewed in a manner which concerns more mainstream outlets. Here are some tips. If you are going to advance a thesis, call it an op-ed, don’t present it as news. If you make a generalization about a trend or a group, interview more than one person from the group you are characterizing. If you want to have sources trust you, then do not slant or misrepresent their views. Follow up on aspects of a story that may lead you away from your preconceived ideas – avoid confirmation bias.

26 Comments

The APA report and the sexual identity therapy framework

October 1, 2009 by 1 Comment

The recent American Psychological Association task force report on sexual orientation and psychotherapy included several positive references to the SITF. I have archived those on the SITF website and am providing two here with brief commentary.

The abstract of the sexual identity therapy framework (SITF) says

Sexual identity conflicts are among the most difficult faced by individuals in our society and raise important clinical, ethical and conceptual problems for mental health professionals. We present a framework and recommendations for practice with clients who experience these conflicts and desire therapeutic support for resolution. These recommendations provide conceptual and empirical support for clinical interventions leading to sexual identity outcomes that respect client personal values, religious beliefs and sexual attractions. Four stages of sexual identity therapy are presented incorporating assessment, advanced informed consent, psychotherapy and sexual identity synthesis. The guidelines presented support the resolution of identity conflicts in ways that preserve client autonomy and professional commitments to diversity.

 

I think the APA report and the SITF are compatible in many important ways.  They both recognize the difference between attractions, behavior and identity. They both recognize that informed consent is critical and that client may seek congruence with other aspects of personality, other than sexual desire, a distinction made in this segment from page 18 of the APA report: [Read more...]

1 Comment

Christianity Today on evangelical divide over reparative therapy

September 14, 2009 by 227 Comments

Christianity Today has an article out online today which covers familiar ground to readers here.

Written by Bobby Ross, the article notes the divisions over reparative therapy which have been accentuated by the recent APA report on sexual orientation and therapy.

No surprise here: Evangelical leaders who advocate gay reparative therapy took umbrage at a highly publicized American Psychological Association (APA) resolution that criticized such efforts.

By a 125-4 vote, the 150,000-member association’s governing council adopted a task force report in August claiming a lack of evidence that efforts to change one’s sexual orientation work.

One aspect of the 138-page resolution, however, drew praise from some Christian psychologists—and exposed a divide in the evangelical therapy community.

As we discuss here often, modest change in orientation has been reported but, in my opinion, the change paradigm for therapy and ministry is old school.

Warren Throckmorton, a counselor who believes that the Bible prohibits homosexuality, commended the task force for “clarifying the value of helping clients sort out their beliefs and work out an identity and life that fit within the clients’ beliefs.”

A one-time proponent of sexual reorientation efforts, Throckmorton said he spoke up until 2004 at conventions of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). But the Grove City College psychology professor has come to believe that changing a person’s sexual orientation is at best difficult.

Rather than focusing on reparative therapy, he has embraced “sexual identity therapy,” which focuses on helping a person live in a way that is consistent with his or her beliefs.

My issues with reparative therapy involve the lack of research support for the basic perspectives on the formation of same-sex attraction as well as the paucity of robust demonstrated outcomes.

“The reparative side sees the objective as healing the trauma [of family dysfunction] and thus curing the homosexuality,” said Throckmorton, former president of the American Mental Health Counselors Association. “The sexual identity side doesn’t see the efficacy of that approach and doesn’t think change is necessary in order to help people live in congruence with their faith.”

Ross then addresses the Jones and Yarhouse study and notes Mark Yarhouse’s views on change and therapy paradigms.

Yarhouse says more Christian psychologists are providing sexual identity therapy rather than reparative therapy. He recommends “a range of options” to help believers make sense of their sexual and religious identities.

“I don’t want to discourage people from making that attempt [to change orientation],” he said. “But for most of those people, success will not be a categorical shift from gay to straight. The gains will likely be modest, more along a continuum.”

As co-author of the Sexual Identity Therapy Framework, Mark offers a balanced view of the landscape. Most of the people who consider Exodus a success have a story of congruence with their faith than tell a story of some degree of change in their sexual arousal patterns.

Alan Chambers weighs in with more of the reparative therapy side of the divide.

Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International, said it is wrong to assert that sexual orientation cannot change as a result of therapy.

“That flies in the face of the testimonies of tens of thousands of people just like me,” said Chambers, a married father of two who credits God and counseling for helping him leave a homosexual lifestyle. “That’s not to say that you can flip a switch and go from gay to straight.”

Finally, NARTH’s David Pruden worries that the APA report will keep people from trying to change.

David Pruden, vice president of operations for NARTH, said the APA’s resolution likely will not affect how Christian psychologists counsel. He voiced concern, though, about its impact on potential clients.

“[This] could discourage individuals from even seeking assistance or entertaining the thought that growth or change is possible,” he said.

Well, if the proper information is disclosed to people, I doubt they will not seek assistance. However, if therapists practice in accord with the SIT Framework and recent APA guidance, they will not experience over promising or be directed to developmental theories which may not fit their lives.

227 Comments

Discover article on sexual orientation change and the APA report

September 9, 2009 by 66 Comments

Discover magazine has an online article out today which covers the APA report, NARTH and the Jones and Yarhouse study.

Here are some excerpts:

Joseph Nicolosi, a psychologist in Encino, Calif., says he can rid adults, teens, and even children of homosexuality. For nearly 30 years, he has offered a “psychodynamic” form of reparative therapy for people—mostly men—seeking to change their sexual orientation.

“If [a patient] can accept his bodily homoerotic experience while staying connected to the therapist,” he wrote in “The Paradox of Self-Acceptance,” “the sexual feeling soon transforms into something else: the recognition of deeper, pain-generated emotional needs which have nothing to do with sexuality.”

He cites the following case: A 43-year-old married accountant was recalling another man that he had seen at the airport while on a business trip. “This had awakened his sexual fantasies and dreams. I asked him to hold onto that image and observe his bodily sensations while staying connected to me. As he did, he felt an intense sexual longing. But as he followed that fantasy through an imaginary sexual scenario, quite unexpectedly, he then experienced an embodied shift to sadness, longing, and emptiness. In tears, he spoke of his sense of deep unworthiness. ‘I would just love him to be my friend! He’s the kind of guy that I always wanted to be close to. How much I just want to be friends with a guy like him.’”

This describes an aspect of the approach advocated in Nicolosi’s new book, Shame and Attachment Loss. People I have seen who have been through this approach describe it as being a chase for making sense of what they eventually come to see as an automatic reaction in search of a justification. Having said that, perhaps this gives some men a greater sense of control over their automatic impulses.

The center of this so-called “reparative therapy” is the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). Its membership—around 1,100 people, according to current NARTH president Julie Harren Hamilton—is dwarfed by the APA’s 150,000 members.

Treatments follow from the assertion that homosexuality is not an innate trait, but rather a result of childhood trauma and lack of attachment to members of the same sex.

“The treatment is different for men and women,” Nicolosi, one of NARTH’s former presidents, told DISCOVER. “The principles are the same—we find that for the lesbian, there is a traumatic attachment loss with the mother, and for the males it’s a traumatic attachment loss with the fathers. We believe the male homosexual should work with a male therapist, and the lesbian should work with a woman.”

It is always difficult to know who Nicolosi is referring to when he says, “we.” Is he referring to NARTH or those who are reparative therapists, or the royal we, referring to himself? However, Hamilton seems to distance NARTH from the singular approach used by Nicolosi when she says:

These treatments take on several approaches. “Psychological care for individuals with unwanted homosexual attractions includes a variety of approaches. There are many paths that lead into and out of homosexuality,” NARTH president Julie Harren Hamilton wrote DISCOVER in an email. “Therapists who assist clients with unwanted homosexual attractions vary in their…methods, [which include] object relations, interpersonal therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, family therapy, and many others.”

This would be a welcome departure for NARTH and Hamilton. On her video Homosexuality 101, she lays out the typical reparative drive explanation as the most common pathway. If NARTH truly wants to move away from the singular cause, it should make it clear what other pathways they view as possible.

Then the article turns to the Jones and Yarhouse study.

SOCE advocates have done studies in recent years to try and show that their efforts are working. One of the more influential among sexuality-change advocates was a study by two professors at Christian colleges: Mark Yarhouse, a psychology professor at Regent University, and Stanton Jones, provost and professor of psychology at Wheaton College.

The six-year study started with 98 subjects, most of whom were white, male, and religious—92 percent identified themselves as “born again.” All of the treatments were provided by Exodus International. Of the 61 who provided data in all six years, 14 of them—23 percent—reported that they had successfully converted to heterosexuality “in some form or another,” according to Jones. Meanwhile, 18 subjects—30 percent—reported that they had dis-identified as homosexuals and were now “chaste,” meaning no overt sexual activity at all. The results were based entirely on self-reported surveys.

I think Judith Glassgold’s assessment of the study was too harsh when she said:

The study was dismissed by the APA task force on multiple grounds, and held as an example of the systematic scientific problems of SOCE today. “Everything was wrong with that study,” Glassgold says. “[Yarhouse and Stanton] chose the wrong statistics to evaluate, they violated statistical laws, and they didn’t have a control group—just a small sample of people recruited from religious groups. They followed the individuals over a couple of years, but didn’t specify that the subjects should only try one intervention at a time, so they tried many at the same time. So we aren’t sure which, if any, intervention was causal.”

The reporter is a little sloppy here referring to Yarhouse and Stanton (Jones, I assume; a little later someone named Miller is named without a first name or introduction) and does not interview another person to provide another perspective. I think if anything the Jones and Yarhouse study is not very positive for sexual reorientation. Flaws aside, it does not help those who want to promote change as the proper focus of therapy or ministry.

There is a historical review of some of the behavioral sexual reorientation methods that might be new to some readers. The article notes that the polarization continues between NARTH and the APA. However, the article failed to really grasp the important news from the APA report, i.e., the respectful and appropriate treatment of religion as a diversity variable and the interface with client self-determination.

66 Comments

Jones and Yarhouse Exodus study follow up

August 9, 2009 by 91 Comments

This morning at the American Psychological Association annual convention, Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse are presenting their Time 6 and final follow up to the study of Exodus participants seeking change of orientation. The paper is titled, Ex Gays? An Extended Longitudinal Study of Attempted Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation. They are presenting these data as a part of a APA symposium titled Sexual Orientation and Faith Tradition Symposium chaired by Dean Byrd.

You can review the paper in full so I will only highlight a few points in the post.

The paper begins by recounting the skepticism toward change evinced by the professional mental health associations. Then, they note an important limit and hypotheses of the study:

Our study addresses the generic questions of whether sexual orientation is changeable, and whether the attempt is intrinsically harmful, by focusing only on the religiously mediated approaches to change; this is not a study of professional psychotherapy. Our hypotheses for this study were taken directly from the prevailing professional wisdom: We hypothesized 1) sexual orientation is not changeable, and 2) the attempt to change is likely harmful. We already cited the American Psychological Association’s (2005) claim that sexual orientation “is not changeable.” Regarding harm, our study was framed in light of the American Psychiatric Association’s (1998) claim that the “potential risks of ‘reparative therapy’ are great, including depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior.” The tools of scientific study are ideally suited to investigate empirically such strong, even absolute claims.

I bolded the statement about the study not being an examination of psychotherapy because I predict that NARTH affiliated therapists and various religious conservative groups will not clearly communicate this point when messaging the results of this study. Despite the fact that Christian self-help groups are different than therapy as practiced by many psychodynamic therapists, I suspect some therapists will hope the public does not catch the distinction.

Now for some results. Retention is sure to be an issue as this study is discussed:

Retention. We began with 98 subjects at T1. Our sample eroded to 73 at T3, a retention rate of 74.5%. This retention rate compares favorably to that of respected longitudinal studies. 63 subjects were interviewed or categorized at T6, for a T1 to T6 6 to 7 year retention of 64%.

Kinsey scale changes:

Table 1

This table shows the shifts in Kinsey scale scores (7 is exclusively homosexual with 1 being exclusively heterosexual). You can see that the shifts on average were about a point on the scale – less than one for the entire group and more than one for the group which were deemed more gay identified at the beginning. Although statistically significant, this would not on average take the group to the straight side of the continuum but rather by considered bisexual by most observers.

They also used the Shively-DeCecco scale which asks participants to rand both same-sex attraction and opposite-sex attraction. As you can see below, the change reflected in the Kinsey moves was due to reductions in SSA and not increases in OSA.

Table 2

Regarding categorical self-assessments, Jones and Yarhouse report modest shifts.

Table 5

Regarding these changes, Jones and Yarhouse say:

Several results are particularly notable. Despite a smaller N for the T6 sample than at T3, we found growth in absolute size in the two Exodus “success” outcome groups moving from row 1 to row 3: Conversion cases grew from 11 to 14 and Chastity cases from 17 to 18. But the group that grew the most in absolute and proportional terms was Failure: Gay Identity which doubled in absolute size from 6 to 12. The percentage of those showing stability of outcome T3 to T6 (row 4) is greatest in columns 1 and 6: the Success: Conversion (73%) and Failure: Gay Identity (67%) categories, with slightly less in the Success: Chastity category (53%). Of the one subject each that shifted from the Success: Conversion and Failure: Gay Identity categories from T3 to T6, each moved to the Continuing category at T6. The largest absolute shift from T3 to T6 of those who participated in the T6 interview was a T3 Success: Chastity case that became a Failure: Gay Identity case; next largest was a Non-Response case at T3 that became a Success: Conversion case.

Most germane to our principal hypothesis that change of sexual orientation is not possible, 53% of the T6 sample of 61 cases that self-categorized (row 3) did so as some version of success, either as Success: Conversion (23%) or Success: Chastity (30%). At T6, 25% of the sample self-categorized as an Exodus failure (Confused or Gay Identity).

In my view, this means of description confuses success with change. Over half did describe some version of success but that is not the same as over half describing sexual orientation change. I will be interested to see how this is reported in the press.

The changes reported here are significant and no doubt welcomed by the people involved. However, they are not the types of changes which I suspect the various mental health groups mean by “sexual orientation change.” Whatever happened to the participants in this study, they do not appear to have gone from gay to straight — in the sense that people who have always been straight are straight. They have gone from gay to less gay and a bit more straight. I do not mean to suggest that this is not important information; it is. But I am wondering if anyone at APA would dispute the within category changes reported here. I am going to ask and will report what I learn.

Jones and Yarhouse seem to be aware that the results can be understood as a change in identity and not orientation. They write:

There is also the question of sexual identity change versus sexual orientation change (see Worthington & Reynolds, 2009). Recent theoretical (e.g., Yarhouse, 2001) and empirical (e.g., Beckstead & Morrow, 2004; Yarhouse & Tan, 2004; Yarhouse, Tan & Pawlowski, 2005; Wolkomir, 2006) work on sexual identity among religious sexual minorities suggests that attributions and meaning are critical in the decision to integrate same-sex attractions into a gay identity or the decision to dis-identify with a gay identity and the persons and institutions that support a gay identity. In light of the role of attributions and meaning in sexual identity labeling, is it possible that some of what is reported in this study as change of orientation is more accurately understood as change in sexual identity?

The entire section on identity and orientation in the discussion section of the paper is good reading. Finally, in light of the APA task force report, I wonder if the discussion section of the Jones and Yarhouse paper could be revisited. The APA report, while skeptical of categorical change, did not take a strong stance regarding harm. Actually, the APA report and the Jones and Yarhouse paper agree on the inconclusive nature of the evidence on that question.

91 Comments
«Older Posts
Newer Posts»