Category: Professional issues

American Psychological Association responds to “external organizations”

The American Psychological Association has issued a call for nominations titled: Call for Nominations for the Board of Director’s Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation. The charge of the Task Force is threefold:

(1) To revise and update the APA resolution Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation (1997);

(2) To generate a report that includes the following:

(a) The appropriate application of affirmative therapeutic interventions for children and adolescents who present a desire to change either their sexual orientation or their behavioral expression of their sexual orientation, or both, or whose guardian expresses a desire for the minor to change;

(b) The appropriate application of affirmative therapeutic interventions for adults who present a desire to change their sexual orientation or their behavioral expression of their sexual orientation, or both;

(c) The presence of adolescent inpatient facilities that offer coercive treatment designed to change sexual orientation or the behavioral expression of sexual orientation;

(d) Education, training, and research issues as they pertain to such therapeutic interventions;

(e) Recommendations regarding treatment protocols that promote stereotyped gender normative behavior to mitigate behaviors that are perceived to be indicators that a child will develop a homosexual orientation in adolescence and adulthood;

(3) To inform the Association’s response to groups that promote treatments to change sexual orientation or its behavioral expression and to support public policy that furthers affirmative therapeutic interventions.

Why convene a task force?

The call for nominations refers to a need to revise the APA guidelines on therapeutic responses and to “research and scholarship” relating to conversion therapy. What I think is amazing is this lenghty sentence:

Several external organizations have recommended that APA update its policy, because of their concerns about the continued visibility of reparative therapy practitioners and treatment facilities and about the role of advocacy for reparative theory in attempts to shape public opinion about the nature of sexual orientation and to support an anti-gay activist role in legislative and judicial arenas.

I wonder which extermal organizations did the recommending? I wonder what they want the APA to say?

I know of several individuals that have asked the APA to consider the need for guidelines when religion and sexuality conflict. However, I do not see this issue in the call for nominations. I hope there will not be a move to prohibit sexual identity therapy.

UPDATE: 2/23/07 – Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink interviewed APA’s Clinton Anderson who identified PFLAG and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force as two groups who recommended that the APA review their policies. This was a short report and so I understand my concerns over sexual identity therapy could not be fully articulated. As any regular reader of this blog will know, I am not an apologist for reparative therapy but I am concerned that advocacy groups can move the APA to form a task force to craft scientific policy for political use.

Soulforce, TWO, APA, ACA & NASW to hold teleconference

Soulforce and Truth Wins Out plan to coordinate a teleconference including representatives of the American Psychological Association, American Counseling Association, and the National Association of Social Workers to discuss their view of how social conservatives misrepresent research. The teleconference will be held at 10:00am EST on Monday, February 26th and will be open only to credentialled media. Later in the day, audio will be available on the Soulforce site. I confirmed this with Cathy Renna of Renna Communications who is providing the teleconferencing services. I asked to listen in but was told there was not enough space.

The following panelists are slated to be involved: Dr. Judith Stacey, Department of Sociology, New York University Dr. Serena Volpp, Chair of the Committee on Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Issues, American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Clinton Anderson, Director of the Office of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Concerns, American Psychological Association, Jean K. Quam, PhD, LICSW, Dean of the School of Social Work, University of Minnesota, NASW Board and Chair of the National Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues, Dr. Brian J. Dew, American Counseling Association, Jeff Lutes, Executive Director, Soulforce, Wayne Besen, Executive Director, Truth Wins Out.

How often does sexual orientation modification occur?

I wanted to clarify an earlier post about the experience of Nicholas Cummings at Kaiser-Permanente. This revised article suggests a 13.4% rate of change for homosexuals who sought sexual reorientation from Kaiser therapists in the 1960s-1980s.

Dr. Cummings estimates as many as 16,000 clients sought therapy due to dissatisfaction with their sexuality during that period and that 67% reached a good outcome (meaning they either achieved a heterosexual adjustment or affirmed a gay identity). Of those, 20% were assessed as having redirected their sexuality toward a heterosexual adaptation, yielding a figure of 13.4% for the entire group. There were many more homosexual clients who sought therapy for the usual reasons people do and these people are not included in the numbers above.

The article is still draft at this point but I thought it might make for some good discussion.

New York Times covers sexual reorientation issue

Michael Luo has a story in the New York Times this morning titled, “Some Tormented by Homosexuality Look to a Controversial Therapy.” Intended to provide coverage of reorientation efforts in the greater New York City area, the article reviews some familiar ground.

The article focuses on Corey Larson, a young man who is seeking change through People Can Change and David Matheson, a student of Joe Nicolosi’s. At first read, it looks to me like a surface review of some issues that breaks little new ground.

Bob Spitzer is quoted sounding like he has changed his views on the prevalence of change. However, he has been saying that change is rare ever since the study came out.

In the audio accompanying the article (Part one, Part two), Mr. Larson described how he has reframed his attractions as being expressions of emotional neediness rather than sexual attractions. Specifically, he says he has emotional needs to connect with men at an emotional level but that these needs are not met through sexual contact. He also describes how change to become completely heterosexual is not now his objective but rather to live consistent with his beliefs is more it.

Mr. Larson speaks highly of the People Can Change group and the Journey Into Manhood weekend. A glance through the website reveals the heavy reliance on reparative drive theory to explain homosexual attractions. I am not sure the creators of this site would say all homosexuals are subject to a deficit in masculine identification but they are saying that their homosexuality was based on that dynamic.

Sexual identity therapy: An interview with Dr. Nicholas Cummings

This is a draft of an article that is looking for a home. Dr. Cummings related his experience in private practice working personally with an estimated 2,000 plus gay clients. The HMO (Kaiser-Permanente) where he was Chief of Mental Health used their experience with between 15,000 and 16,000 gay and lesbian people to form policies that were implemented while he was there. He discloses this information here in print for the first time. Having interviewed Dr. Cummings, I understand better why he is an enthusiastic supporter of our sexual identity therapy framework.

An excerpt:

Therapists at Kaiser developed means to help clients pursue their values and desires in an informed manner. “Over time, we were able to identify within 4 or 5 sessions which clients were likely to pursue change and which ones were not.” Cummings learned that clients most likely to change attractions either had a strong, internalized value system which contradicted homosexual behavior or they developed a homosexual adaptation through a childhood of abusive life experiences. Those with no prior heterosexual inclination and those with a longer history of same-sex attraction were not as likely to develop heterosexual adaptation.

NOTE: 3/8/07 – Inexplicably, a NARTH writer has plagiarized my interview with Dr. Cummings. It is here on the NARTH site and contains quotes that are verbatim from my article.

3/9/07 – Dave Pruden has written to say that the article has been removed. No explanation was given. Dave apologized for this but he said he does not know who is responsible.