Comments on: Sexual abuse and sexual orientation: A prospective study

By: Semyon

Semyon — Sun, 26 May 2013 15:14:59 +0000

Dr. Throckmorton:
With this post being so old (January 2009), I don’t know if you’re still reviewing reader comments but hopefully you are. Here’s my comment/question:
With the Boy Scouts having just decided to allow openly gay individuals to join, I’ve been researching this issue and came across this article.
Having read through this post twice, being careful to note what FRC and Drs. Stall and Valdiserri said, I do not see how the FRC mischaracterized the Stall/Valdiserri study. In its commentary on the research, the FRC did not definitively attribute to homosexuality to childhood sexual abuse but stated that such abuse may lead to many outcomes, including confusion with respect to “…sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Further, I’d like to note that in their reply (at least that reported in the post here – I will read the full reply, which you linked), neither Stall nor Valdiserri took issue with the FRC’s summary of their research, stating that FRC had misquoted or misstated the published text.
Can you please offer some clarification, if there’s an actual distinction between what the FRC wrote and what the study authors said in reply?
The reason I’m asking is because I’m sure you’ve met and talked with Dr. Nicholas Cummings, a former APA President, and I suspect you’re aware of the paper that he and two other former APA Presidents (Drs. Bonnie Strickland and Frank Farley) presented at the APA Convention in 2006.
Entitled “The APA and Psychology Need Reform,” it documents a repressive environment within the APA, whereby the organization discourages any studies that depict homosexuality unfavorably and that (either directly or indirectly) tends to ostracize researchers, who performed the studies.
Consequently, I’m suspicious that Stall and Valdiserri’s response was entirely motivated out of a desire to clarify their study and what it means. I also suspect that much, if not most of their response was a desire to distance themselves from groups that either the APA or powerful organizations that seek to mainstream homosexuality deem politically incorrect.

By: Richard Anderson,MD

Richard Anderson,MD — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:51:22 +0000

I am a retired psychiatrist who used to treat victims of childhood sexual abuse,many of whom had dissociative idenity disorder(DID, formally multiple personalit disorder.) A number of them had homosexual alters but “the person” was hetorsexual. Thus this might explain why 8% reported any history of same sex relatioships. An unpublished study done years ago in Baltimore showed a high percentage of children removed from foster care and placed in a temporary shelter had DID,and I suspect when they grew up many would have same sex partners at some time in there life but not be gay.

By: Katie Cannon

Katie Cannon — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 02:06:54 +0000

Warren,
Thanks.
What is the APA doing with the effects of sexual abuse? How do they view a man who says he’s romantically, aesthetically, emotionally, attracted to women, but nevertheless has sex with men — often because they really like anal sex and really big penises?
Do they consider this an “orientation”? Would this fall under “reparative therapy?”
It’s been very difficult to find a therapist who either 1) views all homosexuality as a developmental delay, or 2) assumes that such a guy just needs to come out of the homosexual closet and embrace his true nature.
Katie

By: Warren

Warren — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 01:41:10 +0000

Katie – It is hard to follow comments on some of the threads due to some changes made by WordPress along the way.
THe short answer is yes I support a full range of therapeutic stances. The longer answer is here: http://www.sexualidentity.blogspot.com. This is the website for the Sexual Identity Therapy Framework. I am in a rush now but will have more to say later. I wanted to get that link in a comment for now.

By: Katie Cannon

Katie Cannon — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 01:00:18 +0000

I have no idea how to follow the order of comments, but now that I have had time to read more about the participants, and especially Warren, and especially his what he says about the I Exist video, I think I have a fully understanding of where this blog is coming from.
In my experience with interacting with 100s of either bisexually identified men or straight men who have sex with men, only an extremely small minority find they are completely free of all homosexual fantasy. And it seems to me that it would be within this population that the likelihood of seeing complete change would be more likely.
Among the straight identified men who feel highly motivated on a conscious level, the numbers of still quite small. More men find that they simply learn to live with their homosexual fantasies in a more peaceful manner and not allow them to through their identities into question, and thus not to act upon them in what feels to them to be an obsessive/compulsive way.
But again, not many seem free of homosexual fantasies. And given my personal situation, I’ve searched high and low for more hopeful statistics.
Still, as Spitzer suggests, even if the numbers are small, the therapeutic community needs to be more open to self-determination.
(But don’t you think this is beginning to happen? It seems to me that both sides of the extreme are coming more towards the middle.)
Change of any sort takes high motivation, and there’s a lot to be gained in having an ambivalent sexuality.
Warren, do you support both gay affirmative therapy as well as helping those who would like to lead a more coherent heterosexual life?
Katie