sexual identity therapy – Page 5

Nick Cummings USA Today Article on Reorientation Therapy

A couple of readers asked me to comment on Nick Cummings USA Today column on reorientation therapy. With some caution, I think it would be good to do so.
First I want to say that I have always liked and admired Nick. His work in managed behavioral health care was pioneering. In the 1980s, Nick promoted the idea that excellent clinical services could save businesses a lot of money and actually expand access to therapy. He was correct and helped create modern managed behavioral healthcare, which is essentially the dominant system today. In addition to the new business strategies that Nick’s company (American Biodyne) innovated, Nick was/is a gifted clinician and trainer. I learned a lot from Nick about therapy as a Biodyne clinician in the mid-1980s. I will always be grateful for his influence on me at that time.
Nick is an admirable gentleman in many ways. He seems to be indestructible and maintains an ambitious and rigorous schedule into his older age. He also reads and studies Greek (another area of common interest) and has developed a cooperative program with China that is helping to shape their behavioral health system.
Having declared a sincere admiration for Nick, I have to add that we disagree about his recent push to defend reorientation therapy as a modality. Nick is an endorser of the Sexual Identity Therapy Framework and I have heard him promote the ideals we support. Thus, I know that any person who sought change therapy from him would not get the usual reparative therapy explanations for homosexuality, nor would religion be used as a coercive tool. In other words, I don’t believe Nick wishes to defend any and all approaches to change therapy; I think he wishes to defend the right of clients to arrange their lives and seek help to do it. However, it is dismaying that his defense comes in the context of the JONAH’s court case. Much of what is done in the name of reorientation cannot be defended.
One area Nick and I disagree about is how much to emphasize the role and importance of bisexuality. Nick once told me that clients who had no prior heterosexual experience were not successful in changing orientation and so over time, the Kaiser-Permanente therapists discouraged orientation change for those clients. To me, this suggests that many of those “changed” clients were bisexuals who found ways to live with or minimize their same-sex attractions. Furthermore, to my knowledge, no one was discussing “spousosexuals” from 1959-1979. Some men and women are generally attracted to the same sex but spontaneously fall in love with one person of the opposite sex. Some of those successes could easily have been people who had the potential for that kind of fluidity. Another problem with relying on Nick’s data is that follow up was lacking for many of the clients. Nick is aware that some of his clients remained changed, but he does not have systematic data on the population.
If all reorientation therapists were like Nick, I doubt we would have the conflict and polarization we have seen over the past decade or so. I also doubt there is anybody currently vocally defending reorientation who practices as Nick did. Current reorientation therapists blame parenting and masculinity deficits for same-sex attraction, some of them put people through emotionally taxing and empirically questionable human potential exercises, still others attempt to coerce people with religion. My impression is that Nick and his crew did none of that. Certainly, in all of my dealings with American Biodyne, no one ever suggested any of that. The emphasis was always on helping the client find strategies to enhance mental health and live in accord with their aspirations.
Nick’s closing paragraph makes me think that he believes that there are some, perhaps many, therapists who work empirically and ethically with “fully informed persons.” This is where we disagree. The way reorientation is practiced as I have seen it and heard it described at various conferences and by various therapists in my travels during the last decade or so gives me no confidence that he is right this time.
Given those concerns, I continue to support the APA’s distinction between sexual orientation and sexual orientation identity; the former being durable once established and the latter being more subject to modification. I am skeptical there are many current reorientation therapists fully inform their clients about that distinction.

Opposition Surfaces as Uganda's Anti-Gay Bill Moves Toward Vote

In recent days, concern about David Bahati’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill has surfaced within Uganda. For instance, Keith Muhakanizi, the deputy secretary to the Treasury, acknowledged recently that the anti-gay bill has hurt Uganda’s economy. According to a news report, Muhakanizi told MPs at Parliament: “I have never seen a country like this where politicians hurt the economy instead of building it.”
One MP, Fox Odoi, a member of Parliament’s committee on Legal Affairs has come out against the bill. According to the report,

Odoi, who has written a minority report bashing the bill, added that if lawmakers ignore his report and pass the bill, they will have set a wrong precedent–that government can enter or legislate what happens in your bedroom.

Odoi’s report can be read here and urges that Parliament scrap the entire bill. While one may debate some of Odoi’s conclusions, she points to child protection proposals that are more in line with what proponents of the anti-gay bill say they want while at the same time pointing out that the anti-gay bill infringes on individual rights and does nothing to protect children.
As opposition surfaces, the anti-gay bill moves closer to a vote. This morning the bill is listed on the agenda as the first bill to be considered after today’s business and three additional reports to Parliament.

NOTICE OF BUSINESS TO FOLLOW

PETITION OF THE PEOPLE OF BULEGENI TOWN COUNCIL IN BULAMBULI DISTRICT
REPORT ON THE STATUS OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES
REPORT OF THE ADHOC COMMITTEE INVESTIGATING THE ELECTRICITY SUB SECTOR
THE ANTI-HOMOSEXUALITY BILL, 2009
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE BILL, 2009
THE PUBLIC ORDER AND MANAGEMENT BILL, 2011
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTS ON THE REPORT OF THE AUDITOR GENERAL FOR THE LOCAL AUTHORITIES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 30^TH JUNE 2009

Reparative Therapy Makeover Continues: JONAH Responds to SPLC Suit

A group called Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund has taken on the defense of Jews Offering New Alternatives to Healing (JONAH) against a suit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC complaint alleges that JONAH violated New Jersey’s consumer fraud law by promising sexual reorientation to clients without success. The complaint is here.

It is very discouraging to see the JONAH complaint framed as a freedom of conscience case. As the complaint outlines, the techniques alleged by the plaintiffs have been discredited within the mainstream mental health community and as such should be confronted. Please see this post on the “oranges therapy” and this one on the use of nudity by JONAH counselors.

Furthermore, it is misleading for JONAH to describe what it does in the following manner:

For over twelve years, JONAH has helped hundreds of people live the lives that they want, consistent with their personal values. JONAH’s mission is to give all people the opportunity to explore their internal conflicts around sexuality and other values in a caring, non-judgmental environment.

As I have noted elsewhere, reparative therapists are beginning to use the language of the sexual identity therapy framework to describe what they do. However, reparative therapy is inconsistent with the SIT Framework.

Sexual Identity Therapy is Not Reparative Therapy

I have had to make this case several times over the years but the defensive posture of reparative therapists of late makes it necessary to do it again. As more people are coming against reparative drive theory, reparative therapists are softening and in some cases altering their rhetoric regarding what they believe and what they do. Note my posts here and here.

In a NBC News article last Wednesday, NARTH’s Executive Secretary David Pruden defends reparative therapy with a line of reasoning that doesn’t sound half bad. He says

“Once people felt less shamed – and I think that’s really positive – there was less a feeling that they couldn’t talk about it,” Pruden said. But those who do want to minimize those feelings, Pruden said, “deserve to have their needs met as well.”

“To say to them, we’re not willing to walk alongside you in your journey feels to me as cruel as the other extremes we used to be at, when people were hurt for saying, ‘I’m gay, and I’m OK with that,’” Pruden said. “In a sense it’s a pro-choice movement – people should have the right to deal with this.”

Walking along side someone in a journey and acknowledging a client’s right to deal with conflict surrounding sexuality seems reasonable and fair. However, that stance is not what is under attack in legislatures and court rooms around the country. If all reparative therapists did was support clients in exploration of their beliefs and values about their sexual orientation, then they would not be experiencing the scrutiny they are now.

What Pruden describes in this brief interview (and to be fair, he may have said more about change therapy that the reporter did not include) is similar to what Mark Yarhouse and I promote in the sexual identity therapy framework. We walk along side people who are struggling with conflicts involving their sexuality and moral beliefs. We do not offer change interventions and in fact stress that we do not see orientation change as the aim of the SITF. I indicate to clients that the evidence does not support efforts to change orientation. I respect the rights of people to make behavioral choices in line with what they believe to be right and work with people to move in a moral direction they believe in. However, reparative therapists do so much more than that.

Check out what Joseph Nicolosi believes about homosexuality as stated in the NBC article. He gives the usual reparative narrative about weak fathers and overbearing mothers being the culprit and then to those who don’t want to take his therapy he says:

“We say, fine, you want to be gay, but are you curious in understanding why you’re gay?” Nicolosi said.

Reparative therapists think they know why people are gay and their interventions of building masculinity with journeys into manhood, complete with holding therapy, sports training, etc., are what attracts the ire of opponents. The reparative therapists have a hammer and to them every gay person is a nail. The reparative therapists on the Dr. Oz show last week seemed oblivious to the message being delivered by the reparative drive theory. Reparative therapy begins with the assumption that gays are disordered and in need of some kind of treatment to cure the underlying psychological damage which may (they don’t all promise that the proper therapy leads to complete change) then lead to a lessening of attraction to the same sex. They compare being homosexual to being an addict, depressed or some other malady.

Walking along side someone does not require what reparative therapists do. Working with someone to work out an adjustment involving religious morality and sexual behavior does not require a belief that same-sex attraction is a disorder or the result of deficient families.

Let’s keep things straight, reparative therapy is one thing and sexual identity therapy is another.

New York Times on the Changes at Exodus

Friday night at the evangelical fights.

After the NPR segment comes this New York Times article which covers much the same ground.

It cannot be any clearer; Alan Chambers is leading Exodus from the wilderness of reparative therapy to the promised land of Grace and soul liberty.

What a ride.

Conservatives in the church and elsewhere should welcome this. There is no necessary conservative attachment to reparative therapy. In fact, given the psychoanalytic roots of the model, it has surprised me that conservative Christians have bought into it for as long they have.