…what does he do with gay men who don’t sound like his theory? Does he in fact say that somewhere down deep inside, they’ve lived his theory, but can’t remember it.

I have no acquaintance myself with Nicolosi, so I have no idea how he operates in this respect, but I would imagine that his theory can be somehow tweaked or, to use JR’s terminology, “refined” to fit most cases. This shouldn’t be too difficult because a gay client who goes for “reparative therapy” is likely to be troubled about his sexual orientation and therefore will approach the therapist as “the one who knows”. Such a client will not wish to be or to seem uncooperative, especially since he is paying for the “therapy”, and is therefore likely to suspend his faculties of criticism and independent thought. And as the biologist Douglas Futuyma noted:
“Whatever your personality or history may be, a good astrologer will find some conjunction of the planets that explains why you are this way, even though as a Sagittarius you’re ‘expected’ to be different.”

then the father-deficit theory, if refined, might help explain something about some cases of homosexuality, even if not all of it.

JR, the trouble is that Nicolosi insists the father-deficit theory can account for most or all cases of male homosexuality — he thinks the theory has “broad explanatory power”, despite the rather obvious points that:
(a) plenty of male homosexuals DON’T have childhood histories consistent with the father-deficit theory, and
(b) plenty of male heterosexuals DO have childhood histories consistent with the father-deficit theory.
So while your point is well made that the “absent father” hypothesis shouldn’t be totally discarded (because it might yet turn out to be relevant to a small sub-set of male homosexuals), that doesn’t justify Nicolosi’s giddy overuse of “failed father-son bonding” as a universal, one-size-fits-all explanation.

He validates his theory every time he meets a gay man who sounds like his theory. I know this first hand from discussions with him.

Warren, what does he do with gay men who don’t sound like his theory? Does he in fact say that somewhere down deep inside, they’ve lived his theory, but can’t remember it.
I’m really interested in this, Warren. Are certain types of gay men attracted to Nicolosi because their life fits his theory? Is that a possibility? If they find it doesn’t fit, do they find another therapist?

SGM – It has to do with the links you include. Spam filters stop comments with lots of links because spammers use those links.