Category: Religion and sexuality

Former ex-gay leaders in Australia renounce ministries

Today’s Sydney Star-Observer reports on 5 ex-ex-gays who have denounced their former programs. I was struck by the mention of discipline in the arsenal of techniques.

Many former leaders believed that homosexuality was a choice, including Vonnie Pitts, the former leader of Living Waters, an organisation that conducts disciplinary programs for those pursuing “sexual wholeness”.

I don’t know much about Living Waters. Readers who do, what could she be referring to by the use of the term, “disciplinary programs?”

The emphasis on rigid gender roles sounds sadly familiar:

After attending Australia’s first ex-gay program in 1972, Anthony Venn-Brown spent 22 years trying to change his sexuality.

The program, he said, was about “modifying your behaviour to become more masculine”.

“You were never allowed to work in a kitchen – that was women’s work,” he said. “You were always doing maintenance work and manual labour outside … and they also removed any articles of clothing from my wardrobe that they believed were not masculine.

…and

“They believed you should have a good, strong male role model because your father was emotionally distant. Therefore they gave me a minder, who would be with me 24 hours a day and who would make sure I was behaving myself.”

Theories have consequences and thus it is important to stay true to the data and to be tentative where the data are not very clear. Dubious theories of sexual orientation development can lead to dubious practices — as is illustrated here. I may have mentioned this before on this blog, but this reminds me of an illustration Ariel Shidlo gave at the 2000 APA convention when he and Michael Schroeder presented their data on harm from reorientation. He noted a young man was asked by his reparative therapist to give up a piano scholarship because piano playing was too feminine. He gave it up but, of course did not lose his attractions to men. The client however, was angry and frustrated.

Neuroimaging study differentiates gay and straight males

It must be Bailey week here on the blog. I am reporting here on a study done in his lab led by Northwestern undergraduates Adam Safron and Ben Barch. The study titled: “Neural Correlates of Sexual Arousal in Homosexual and Heterosexual Men” was published in the April, 2007 edition of Behavioral Neuroscience.

Dr. Bailey described this study at the December conference at Catholic University. Essentially, brain scans demonstrate that activation in the brains of gay and straight men differ in response to sexual images. The abstract reads:

Men exhibit much higher levels of genital and subjective arousal to sexual stimuli containing their preferred sex than they do to stimuli containing only the nonpreferred sex. This study used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate how this category-specific pattern would be reflected in the brains of homosexual (n = 11) and heterosexual (n = 11) men. Comparisons of activation to preferred sexual stimuli, nonpreferred sexual stimuli, and sports stimuli revealed large networks correlated with sexual arousal, spanning multiple cortical and subcortical areas. Both homosexual and heterosexual men exhibited category-specific arousal in brain activity. Within the amygdala, greater preference-related activity was observed in homosexual men, but it is unclear whether this is a cause or a consequence of their sexuality. In a subsequent analysis of regions hypothesized to support arousal, both participant groups demonstrated widespread increases in evoked activity for preferred stimuli. Aggregate data from these regions produced significant differences between stimulus types in 16 out of 22 participants. Significant activational differences matched reported sexual orientation in 15 of these 16 participants, representing an advance in psychophysiological measures of arousal.

At the Catholic University conference, Bailey showed videos of the collective response of men to preferred sexual images compared to neutral images and the results were striking. There was lots of activation with preferred sexual images (gay men to men and straight men to women) and next to nothing with non-preferred imagery. Here is his description of the scans:

And what I’m going to show you next is a movie. It’s a quick movie of somebody’s brain activity while he watches — well, it’s a contrast, actually — preferred stimuli minus neutral. So, this study has both gay men and straight men, and this is the way their brain reacts when they see their preferred sexual stimuli, which, for a straight man, would be women, for gay man would be men, against watching neutral things like — actually, our neutral stimuli here are people playing sports.

And the thing to pay attention to, these hot colors mean that preferred is activating the brain more than neutral, these cold colors mean that neutral stimuli is activating the brain more than preferred. Doesn’t really — just look at all the — you’re going to see a lot of colors like this. Okay? …did you see all those bright colors there? That is a big, big, bold brain reaction to preferred stimuli. The brain really likes seeing preferred sexual stimuli, in men.

Safron et al

Okay. So, the next one is the same sort of thing, except now what you’re going to see is nonpreferred stimuli, so this would be a straight man looking at nude men, and a gay man looking at nude women. Okay? Look how different it looks.

Were all subjects congruent with their self-reports? No, one subject, “Participant 16” demonstrated activation to same-sex imagery but his self-report was heterosexual.

Participant 16 showed unusually positive evaluations for nonpreferred stimuli. This participant, a self-reported heterosexual, had 10 instances in which he gave positive evaluations to nonpreferred stimuli, whereas other heterosexual men averaged 0.6 positive evaluations. He also tended to give less negative evaluations for nonpreferred stimuli compared with other heterosexual men (the percentages rated “strongly dislike” were 48% and 66%, respectively). Furthermore, he rated preferred stimuli less positively compared with other heterosexual men (the percentages rated “strongly like” were 46% and 82%, respectively).

Was participant 16 bisexual? In denial? Bothered by the procedure? Hard to tell. Dr. Bailey thinks his erotic preferences were really same-sex but his self-concept straight. In practice, who knows? In theory, someone like this could experience attractions to the same sex and process those attractions in a manner that would not lead to a self-attribution of being gay. To me, this highlights one interpretive issue with research like this. Clearly, brain reactions were different associated with sexual orientation differences – and before the person was very aware of the stimuli. However, humans may make a variety of meanings of the same brain activity. This research can tell us what brains are doing but not exactly what it means to any given individual.

Another issue of some import to me as Dr. Bailey and I collaborate to apply this technology with ex-gays is the difficulty some religious participants will have viewing nude pictures. We will need to discuss how what the brain might do with mixed feelings about participation and where that state might show up on the scan. And we might need to have another set of pics to view.

APA sexual identity therapy symposium

APA conference

The symposium went well with about 130 in attendance. Here are my power point and notes that were distributed. Later, after I get permission from the other presenters, I will post their slides as well.

APA symposium

In the picture below, Lee Beckstead and I are fielding a question; Mark Yarhouse is trying to get us off stage so the man on the left can start his presentation. APA symposium

Above, from left to right, are Mark Yarhouse, Erica Tan and yours truly. Lee had to run off to another session. Thanks to each of the presenters and especially Mark and Lee for organizing the symposium.

Sexual identity therapy and neutrality, Part two

In this second post about therapeutic neutrality, I want to discuss what it does and doesn’t mean in sexual identity therapy. Again, I want to react to some of the thoughts from Dr. Nicolosi in his article, Why I Am Not a Neutral Therapist.

Dr. Nicolosi writes:

What will happen when the uncommitted (“neutral”) therapist hears his client revealing self-destructive behaviors that are statistically proven to be associated with SSA? How will he interpret these behaviors? Staying out of philosophical territory with the client would require a sort of “Rogerian neutrality” that even Carl Rogers himself couldn’t live up to. I can’t imagine any psychologist who actually does this therapy on a regular basis believing that such an approach would be successful.

This needs to be unpacked a bit. First of all, when clients, either gay or straight or in between, describe self-destructive behavior, I believe therapists should confront the consequences to the client and others of this behavior. Asking clients about the consequences and pointing out denial is a standard therapeutic stance. SIT can be used by directive and non-directive therapists. There is nothing in the SIT framework that prevents the confrontation of self-harm.

What Dr. Nicolosi seems to be implying about the behavior of homosexuals in this paragraph, he make more explicit in the next:

Along the way, clients always report a host of maladaptive, self-defeating behaviors that restrict their maturation. The successful clinician must have an understanding of the meaning of these common factors. He will also observe fundamental distortions of self-identity. Once seen, how can these factors — including their meaning and likely origins — be ignored?

Apparently, he sees self-destructive behaviors in all of his clients. I do not, and in my research investigations, I have not found this to be invariably true. Statistical association is not cause nor does statistical significance implicate an entire group of people. I have addressed elsewhere on this blog, to wit:

Thus, it would be inconsistent with the research on psychiatric risk to deny members of at-risk groups “even the possibility” of a “fulfilling life,” whether partnered or not. Higher risk, yes; inevitable mental health maladjustment for all members of a group of people? No.

To further address Dr. Nicolosi’s question: when maladaptive, self-defeating behaviors are evident, therapeutic respect for the client’s value position does not mean that these behaviors are ignored. They are not. However, not all clients who are attracted to the same sex have the same issues. The SI therapist does not assume that all same-sex attracted clients have the same concerns, problems, issues, behaviors or backgrounds. This is more like theoretical neutrality; the SI therapist interprets the literature to depict a varied clinical landscape, not one of uniform histories and dynamics. We also do not tell clients that being attracted to the same sex assigns them to a life of despair and promiscuity. Nor do we tell them that their attractions to the same sex mean one thing. In the advanced informed consent phase, we discuss the research on the health and mental health correlates of behavior. Thus, if we have a client who is engaged in risky behavior, we inform them of the risks. If we learn that a client’s draw to the same sex has some historical referent, we certainly help that client process the issue. However, we do not assume that all attractions to the same sex mean the same thing, or that such attractions are of necessity tied to some historical set of deficits.

Dr. Nicolosi then contrasts himself further:

As Charles Socarides once said, the therapist must be neutral in judging the client, his behavior, and his choices; but he cannot be neutral about the condition of homosexuality.

Indeed the SI therapist is open to the distinct possibility that sexual preferences derive from multiple pathways and follow multiple trajectories. The SI therapist agrees with APA past president Nicholas Cummings who said: “There are as many kinds of homosexuals as heterosexuals. Homosexuality is not a unitary experience.”

So to summarize, SI therapists are not neutral when confrontation of self-destructive behavior is warranted, but we do not presume a uniform set of antecedents and outcomes of homosexual attractions. I guess you might say, we have an “Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.