Category: Professional issues

Sexual identity: Our bodies tell us who we are

(First posted October 1, 2007)
Warning: Long post…
This post could be part three of the series on sexual identity therapy and neutrality but I chose this title because I want to focus on one specific issue, at least in my mind, with telling psychotherapy clients that “our bodies tell us who we are.” Saying something like this to a client is the expression of a natural law argument that is expressed by Dr. Joseph Nicolosi in his article “Why I Am Not a Neutral Therapist.”

Our Bodies Tell Us Who We Are
Philosophically, I am an essentialist — not a social constructionist: I believe that gender identity and sexual orientation are grounded in biological reality. The body tells us who we are, and we cannot “construct” — assemble or disassemble — a different reality in which gender and sexual identity are out of synchrony with biology.
The belief that humanity is designed for heterosexuality has been shaped by age-old religious and cultural forces, which must be respected as a welcome aspect of intellectual diversity. Our belief is not a “phobia” or pathological fear.
Natural-law philosophy says this view derives from mankind’s collective, intuitive knowledge; a sort of natural, instinctive conscience. This would explain why so many people — even the nonreligious — sense that a gay identity is a false construct.

Clients who already believe a natural law argument would most likely look for a therapist who believed as Dr. Nicolosi does. In that case, I do not see how he could be accused of imposing his values on the client; clients who are committed to this perspective (many conservatives, for example) might not work well with a therapist who did not articulate a similar view. On the worldview front, I suspect many people are directed by their spiritual advisors to look for counselors who are amenable to the teaching of their church. I also suspect, that feminists look for feminist therapists and so on. This will no doubt continue no matter what the professions pronounce.
What I want to raise now are some issues with the natural law argument. Specifically, I propose that if we know who we are via our bodies, then a fairly solid argument can be made against Dr. Nicolosi’s conclusions. He argues that genitalia and procreative capacity is the definer of correct identity. However, there is more to body than genitals and secondary sex characteristics. Brain is a part of body. As an organ of the body, the way the brain functions and is organized must be important as well. I am not here talking about psychological constructionism or the constructed opinion of a person that he/she is gay or straight, male or female. I am talking about the automatic response of the brain to triggers both sexual and otherwise that differentiate gay and straight people. In the research available, brain reactions differentiate people based on sexual preferences. In other words, if the body tells us who we are, and brain is body, then our brains tell us whether we like the same sex, the opposite one, or both. And our brains do this well before we have time to think about it.
I have written before about the pheromone studies conducted by a team led by Ivanka Savic from Sweden. Here is what I wrote about their study of lesbians:

This study shows that sexual orientation at the extreme (5-6 Kinsey scale) differentiates how the brain responds to a putative pheromone. The response from lesbians is not as clear cut as gay males. Lesbians process estrogen derived pheromones both in the normal olfactory fashion and via the hypothalamus (a link in the sexual response). The participants did not experience any sexual response so it is interesting that these lesbians’ brains registered the pheromones in a different way than did straight women. Lesbians were somewhat like straight men but not exactly like them. The reference is: Berglund, H., Lindstro”m, P., & Savic, I. (2006). Brain response to putative pheromones in lesbian women. Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Science, Early Edition (www.pnas.org).

I also reviewed their initial study of males:

• The study does show involuntary hypothalamic response associated with self-assessed sexual orientation
• The study shows that gay males do react to the estrogen condition but in a different manner than they react to the testosterone condition
• The study cannot shed light on the complicated question of whether sexual orientation of the participants is hard wired.
• The brains of these participants may have acquired a sexual response to these chemicals as the result of past sexual experience. In other word, the response described in this study could well have been learned.
• If these results hold up, this could explain why varying sexual attractions seem so “natural.” Also, such conditioning could give insight into why changing sexual attractions is often experienced by those changing sexual preferences as a process of unlearning responses to environmental triggers.

There are other lines of research that also find large involuntary differences in brain response or perceptual response associated with sexual attractions. I could add the brain imaging work of Michael Bailey which I referenced recently.
Continue reading “Sexual identity: Our bodies tell us who we are”

Reparative therapy information page

A reminder: I have a page dedicated to an examination of evidence for reparative therapy. More accurately, the page addresses the flaws of the theory and finds it inadequate as a general theory of same-sex attraction.
Here is a sampling:

Posts on the theory
Reparative therapy for females – Discounts Janelle Hallman’s thesis that lesbians do not have “selves.”
Father – Son estrangement – This brief post quotes research on father-son relationships in general and how that relates to the thesis that male homosexuals have poor relationships with their fathers. Straights have such poor relationships too.
Queer theories for the straight guise
Many people want to know why they experience same-sex attraction. Reparative drive theory provides a narrative but it may not be correct. In Why Do I Have These Feelings? I examine how this pressure for a narrative may be misleading.
Masculinity and reparative therapy
Mankind Project clarifies stance on reparative therapy – Reparative therapists often refer clients to activities and groups which promise to enhance masculinity as a means of reducing same-sex attractions. Macho Man group Mankind Project clarifies that the New Warriors Training Adventure is not a form of reparative therapy.

I have not included some of the recent posts or articles off the site, such as this one at Huffington Post on the use of the discredited research by George Rekers by Joseph Nicolosi, but will over the next several weeks. For now, I hope this is a useful resource.

Sissy Boy Experiment, Part 3 – Nicolosi defends reparative therapy

In this segment, Ryan Kendall, former reparative therapyclient, alleges that he was mistreated by Joseph Nicolosi. For his part, Nicolosi can’t remember Kendall. CNN’s Randi Kaye produces bills and documentation from the clinic but Nicolosi can’t recall the sessions. This is a component of the segment that I wanted to know more about.

Column at HuffPo: Experts and Homosexuality: Don't Try This at Home

Huffington Post just published my op-ed about the Kirk Murphy story featured at Box Turtle Bulletin and CNN. Part 3 of the series on CNN wraps up tonight with former reparative therapy client, Ryan Kendall, and his former therapist (according to Kendall) Joseph Nicolosi.
Here is the first few paragraphs, go on over to HuffPo and give the rest a read:

Last week, Chuck Colson used his Breakpoint radio show and column to promote the theory that one can prevent homosexuality by altering parent-child relations. To prevent male homosexuality, Colson wrote, “early intervention, in which the boy’s father learns how to be both strong and caring, will interrupt an unhealthy mother-son bond.” In other words, according to Colson, troublesome parent-child relationships are at the root of homosexuality.
Colson based his program on a book by Joseph and Linda Nicolosi, titled A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. In their book, the Nicolosis assert that gender norms should be reinforced and fathers should help boys develop a strong sense of masculinity. In his talks on the subject, Nicolosi says that fathers and mothers play differently with their children and he lauds the rougher manner of fathers. For instance, in a 2006 talk on the roots of male homosexuality, I heard Nicolosi describe how some fathers playfully toss their infant sons in the air. Nicolosi then joked that if the father did not catch his son and the infant fell and cracked his head, that the son might have brain damage, “but at least he won’t be gay.”

The roots of preventing homosexuality: George Rekers uncovered at Box Turtle Bulletin

Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin has an extraordinary report on a young man treated by George Rekers in 1970. This is a must read and a significant contribution to understanding the roots of treatment for homosexuality. As most readers of this blog know, George Rekers, former NARTH board member, was caught with a male prostitute last year. His efforts to prevent homosexuality were unsuccessful on that personal level and according to Burroway had tragic consequences for a young man who launced Rekers career.
Here is just a snippet of the report. This section is relevant to the post I did last week on Chuck Colson’s promotion of Joseph Nicolosi’s book on preventing homsexuality.

UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute wasn’t just one of the world’s great research facilities, it was home to some of the top experts on gender identity. Dr. Robert Stoller, who established the Gender Identity Clinic at the Institute in 1963, is credited with coming up with the concept of “gender identity” as a distinct concept in which one’s self-perception of his or her gender can be different from one’s apparent anatomical sex.
Stoller was a leading expert on “transsexualism,” but he didn’t venture much into homosexuality in the 1960s, calling it “a large issue beyond my present understanding.” But by the 1970?s he was willing to tackle homosexuality as well, since he regarded homosexuality and transsexualism as two expressions of the same problem. Stoller believed that the most feminine boys — the most extremely feminine boys — would grow up to become transsexual. But those boys who somehow managed to pick up some stray bits of masculinity along the way had considerably more options available to them. With a touch more masculinity, a boy might avoid becoming transsexual and instead become merely homosexual. Add still more masculinity, and maybe he would be straight but a cross-dresser. More masculinity still, and he’d be “normal.” How much masculinity a boy picked up depended entirely on his mother.
This meant that feminine boys weren’t the only ones in psychology’s crosshairs. Mothers were targeted as well. This was nothing new. Psychology had long blamed mothers for all sorts of problems in their children, including schizophrenia, autism, asthma, and, of course, homosexuality and other forms of gender non-conformity. Stoller told a panel at a 1976 American Psychoanalytic Association meeting, “Most feminine boys result from a mother who, whether with benign or malignant intent, is too protective, and a father who either is brutal or absent (literally or psychologically).” That statement apportions some blame on the father, but Stoller let them off the hook because, after all, it was the mother who chose to have the father in the picture to begin with. “He was chosen by his wife to be a distant, passive, nonparticipating man.”
Stoller was just one of the many stars at UCLA. Dr. Ivar Lovaas, who established the ward that housed the clinic, was head of UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. He was already famous for his controversial behavioral treatment program for autistic children, some of which involved electric shock therapy. Some of his behavior modification techniques (minus the electric shock therapy) made their way into UCLA’s treatment program for suspected “prehomosexual” or “pretranssexual” children. Another UCLA researcher, Alexander Rosen, published several important articles describing his work with gender nonconforming children and adults. Three of his early papers were co-written with Stoller. Later, he would co-write at least fourteen more with Rekers. Peter Bentler was another noted researcher, and his contributions were in the field of “psychometrics” — in developing psychological tests and performing complex statistical analyses in order to interpret the results. He would write five papers with Rekers and Rosen, including three papers vigorously defending the Clinic’s experimental children’s program against its more vocal critics.

As noted last week, Chuck Colson promoted these same theories in his columns encouraging parents to get Nicolosi’s book on preventing homosexuality. Guess who wrote the only professional recommendation for Nicolosi’s book on Amazon.com? George Rekers is the correct answer. Rekers wrote:

“Every concerned parent will benefit from this practical parenting advice on how to help a child develop a secure gender identity that leads to a normal heterosexual orientation in adulthood. Joseph Nicolosi is an internationally recognized professional expert on therapies that promote normal heterosexual adjustment. He is known for his long-standing leadership in a key professional association that applies scientific findings to psychosexual adjustment. But his breadth of technical scientific knowledge is combined with years of extensive clinical experience helping everyday people. This combination has enabled the authors to explain psychological research findings to parents in a very practical way. Their book provides clear guidance on what parents can do to promote their child’s sexual adjustment.” (George A. Rekers, Ph.D., professor of neuropsychiatry and behavior science, University of South Carolina School of Medicine )

This recommendation should be read in the light of Burroway’s new report. According to Burroway, Anderson Cooper at CNN is also covering this story beginning tomorrow night. I will be following it as well, and providing additional material that highlights the roots of efforts to prevent homosexuality in children and the parent blaming that goes along with it.