Comments on: Washington Times: APA’s position unchanged

By: Throckmorton

Throckmorton — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 04:47:00 +0000

Anon – This is a good question. For most counseling issues, there is an age of consent for medical or psychological care. This would apply to this kind of care as well.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 00:56:00 +0000

But Mr. Koocher said discussion of interventions in the “extremely complex issue” of sexual orientation “must balance patient choice with the therapist’s ethical obligation to obtain informed consent for any therapy process.” “When dealing with sexual orientation,” he said, a therapist “must” be sure that a person wishing to change is not “motivated purely from the social pressures of a homophobic environment” because therapy “will not modify societal prejudices.” Mr. Koocher further stressed that “patients must understand” that treatments intended to modify sexual orientation “lack a validated scientific foundation and may prove psychologically harmful.”

QUESTIONS: How does a therapist do all of this when the client is a child? How do we know his parents aren’t trying to “fix” their kid because of social pressure and homophobia? How do we repsect the CHILD’s right to “self-determination? And most importantly, how does the therapist KNOW that he or she is not reacting to the same pressures?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 21:23:00 +0000

NARTH has again oversold what happened at the APA. Believing in self-determination does not equate in support for reparative therapy. The APA position is that in a free society people can do lots of unwise things. However, the APA would not support them.

By: Craig

Craig — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 05:00:00 +0000

I think therapy can be harmful to a patient not necessarily that it actively causes actively, but in the sense that it fails to address a patient’s shame about his SSA. So, it would cause indirect harm through neglect: the patient is told that his SSA is abnormal, and that it CAN be fixed if he tries hard enough. That is a recipe for disaster, assuming that the patient has no potential for heterosexuality from the start.

Instead, its important for the patient to know that homosexuality is a viable, perfectly normal option to take. If the patient demonstrates maturity, peace of mind, and true self determination, and thus still requests that the therapist help develop his heterosexual potential, only then should the therapist assist him.

A lot can be said for making peace with your SSA, whether you seek to affirm or leave it.