Comments on: Roots of reparative therapy – Momism and psychiatry in the 1940s

By: Charlie

Charlie — Wed, 30 May 2018 20:14:43 +0000

Yes, it’s a tricky proposition prove one way or the other. If I were to state it more firmly, I think we will gradually hone in on environmental factors that increase the likelihood or even lead to same sex attraction. But it’s going to be slow going considering how unpopular that view is.
Teresa, it appears that some pre-natal or even hereditary aspects may play a role but my vantage point is that post-birth environment plays a larger role. It’s really hard to discount how much psychological development occurs during those first, extremely formative 10 years.
William, you call it “blame” but others might refer to it as looking for causation. Is that so bad?

By: Richard Willmer

Richard Willmer — Wed, 30 May 2018 20:14:43 +0000

@ Charlie :
My point is really that those who do, for whatever reason (rejection/persecution by others, self-loathing, concerns about living the kind of life that fits with their ‘values system’, a desire to be what they might consider to be ‘better’), want to ‘change’ should take ‘ownership’ of that process and not base their approach on what others might have done. There is so often in practice a very fine line between ‘seeking causation’ and ‘looking for someone else to blame’.
Obviously, my own perspective on this is coloured by my strongly-held that ‘being gay’ is not, in and of itself, necessarily a ‘problem’ (or it is only a ‘problem’ inasmuch as others make it one).

By: Teresa

Teresa — Wed, 30 May 2018 20:14:43 +0000

Thank you, William, for the quote from Douglas Futuyma. And, I love your analogy about astrology and astrologers and the uncanny way that whatever they seem to say, seems to fit whomever cares to listen.
Segway into a similar topical quote from Herbert Spencer:

There is a principle that is a bar against all information; a proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. That principle is contempt prior to investigation.
Herbert Spencer

By: Teresa

Teresa — Wed, 30 May 2018 20:14:43 +0000

Mary stated:

I really do think we are going to find a biological standard that lends itself to homosexuality when mixed with the right parental mode and environment.

The more I read and contemplate this issue, personal to me and fraught with my prejudices and biases, I’m less and less inclined to see parental mode as being a significant factor or much of a factor, at all. Environment, we must remember, has to include the important prenatal environment in the womb. The time when the most critical development, divisional and organizational processes, gene/protein expression, hormonal triggering is occurring. All maintained by the mother’s own internal feeding of the developing child through her blood. The mother’s own stressors must of necessity be transmitted to the child throughout the time in the womb.
Mary, if you’re including prenatal development, in your term ‘environment’, I’d agree with you. If however, by environment you mean post-natal parenting or socialization factors, I won’t disagree entirely; but, frankly parenting modes/socialization are at the bottom of my hit-list of causative factors for homosexuality.

By: Mary

Mary — Wed, 30 May 2018 20:14:41 +0000

Ooops – I meant to say “But it is also just as sloppy to say they had everything to do with it”