Tag: Joseph Nicolosi

Discover article on sexual orientation change and the APA report

Discover magazine has an online article out today which covers the APA report, NARTH and the Jones and Yarhouse study.

Here are some excerpts:

Joseph Nicolosi, a psychologist in Encino, Calif., says he can rid adults, teens, and even children of homosexuality. For nearly 30 years, he has offered a “psychodynamic” form of reparative therapy for people—mostly men—seeking to change their sexual orientation.

“If [a patient] can accept his bodily homoerotic experience while staying connected to the therapist,” he wrote in “The Paradox of Self-Acceptance,” “the sexual feeling soon transforms into something else: the recognition of deeper, pain-generated emotional needs which have nothing to do with sexuality.”

He cites the following case: A 43-year-old married accountant was recalling another man that he had seen at the airport while on a business trip. “This had awakened his sexual fantasies and dreams. I asked him to hold onto that image and observe his bodily sensations while staying connected to me. As he did, he felt an intense sexual longing. But as he followed that fantasy through an imaginary sexual scenario, quite unexpectedly, he then experienced an embodied shift to sadness, longing, and emptiness. In tears, he spoke of his sense of deep unworthiness. ‘I would just love him to be my friend! He’s the kind of guy that I always wanted to be close to. How much I just want to be friends with a guy like him.'”

This describes an aspect of the approach advocated in Nicolosi’s new book, Shame and Attachment Loss. People I have seen who have been through this approach describe it as being a chase for making sense of what they eventually come to see as an automatic reaction in search of a justification. Having said that, perhaps this gives some men a greater sense of control over their automatic impulses.

The center of this so-called “reparative therapy” is the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). Its membership—around 1,100 people, according to current NARTH president Julie Harren Hamilton—is dwarfed by the APA’s 150,000 members.

Treatments follow from the assertion that homosexuality is not an innate trait, but rather a result of childhood trauma and lack of attachment to members of the same sex.

“The treatment is different for men and women,” Nicolosi, one of NARTH’s former presidents, told DISCOVER. “The principles are the same—we find that for the lesbian, there is a traumatic attachment loss with the mother, and for the males it’s a traumatic attachment loss with the fathers. We believe the male homosexual should work with a male therapist, and the lesbian should work with a woman.”

It is always difficult to know who Nicolosi is referring to when he says, “we.” Is he referring to NARTH or those who are reparative therapists, or the royal we, referring to himself? However, Hamilton seems to distance NARTH from the singular approach used by Nicolosi when she says:

These treatments take on several approaches. “Psychological care for individuals with unwanted homosexual attractions includes a variety of approaches. There are many paths that lead into and out of homosexuality,” NARTH president Julie Harren Hamilton wrote DISCOVER in an email. “Therapists who assist clients with unwanted homosexual attractions vary in their…methods, [which include] object relations, interpersonal therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, family therapy, and many others.”

This would be a welcome departure for NARTH and Hamilton. On her video Homosexuality 101, she lays out the typical reparative drive explanation as the most common pathway. If NARTH truly wants to move away from the singular cause, it should make it clear what other pathways they view as possible.

Then the article turns to the Jones and Yarhouse study.

SOCE advocates have done studies in recent years to try and show that their efforts are working. One of the more influential among sexuality-change advocates was a study by two professors at Christian colleges: Mark Yarhouse, a psychology professor at Regent University, and Stanton Jones, provost and professor of psychology at Wheaton College.

The six-year study started with 98 subjects, most of whom were white, male, and religious—92 percent identified themselves as “born again.” All of the treatments were provided by Exodus International. Of the 61 who provided data in all six years, 14 of them—23 percent—reported that they had successfully converted to heterosexuality “in some form or another,” according to Jones. Meanwhile, 18 subjects—30 percent—reported that they had dis-identified as homosexuals and were now “chaste,” meaning no overt sexual activity at all. The results were based entirely on self-reported surveys.

I think Judith Glassgold’s assessment of the study was too harsh when she said:

The study was dismissed by the APA task force on multiple grounds, and held as an example of the systematic scientific problems of SOCE today. “Everything was wrong with that study,” Glassgold says. “[Yarhouse and Stanton] chose the wrong statistics to evaluate, they violated statistical laws, and they didn’t have a control group—just a small sample of people recruited from religious groups. They followed the individuals over a couple of years, but didn’t specify that the subjects should only try one intervention at a time, so they tried many at the same time. So we aren’t sure which, if any, intervention was causal.”

The reporter is a little sloppy here referring to Yarhouse and Stanton (Jones, I assume; a little later someone named Miller is named without a first name or introduction) and does not interview another person to provide another perspective. I think if anything the Jones and Yarhouse study is not very positive for sexual reorientation. Flaws aside, it does not help those who want to promote change as the proper focus of therapy or ministry.

There is a historical review of some of the behavioral sexual reorientation methods that might be new to some readers. The article notes that the polarization continues between NARTH and the APA. However, the article failed to really grasp the important news from the APA report, i.e., the respectful and appropriate treatment of religion as a diversity variable and the interface with client self-determination.

The persistent rumor that the APA wants people to change churches

I addressed it here and now here but it continues.

This morning I read an article on the website of the National Catholic Register by Father Benedict Groeschel, host of Sunday Night Live on EWTN (Catholic network). Father Groeschel is laboring under a significant misunderstanding of the APA report when he writes:

On top of all that, in an almost bizarre ignoring of the purposes of his own discipline, one of the members of the task force that composed the report claimed that people who belong to religions that expect celibacy from the unmarried and monogamy from the married but find such expectations too difficult or onerous should simply change to a religion which requires less of them.

I should say I am pretty sure this is misinformation. I don’t know if a member of the task force speaking for him or herself might have said people should switch churches. I have not been able to find a quote to this effect. However, I do know the APA denied this intent and the APA report does not support the idea that a church switch would be promoted as some kind of easy way out for its own sake. Any switching would be done for reasons based in belief change and could go either direction – from gay affirming to non-affirming or vice versa.

How did Father Groeschel become misinformed? A familiar suspect appears later in the article.

It is necessary to register a strong objection to this recent statement. For valid and reasonable information I suggest the writings of an outstanding researcher and therapist in this area, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, who has long been the inspiration behind the National Association for Research and Therapy for Homosexuality.

Recently, he was quoted in this newspaper pointing out that research used by homosexual activists shows that public opinion regarding homosexuality will change if people believe it is genetic. “To the extent people are not responsible,” said Nicolosi, “their behavior will be tolerated.” (See “Scientists Outing ‘Gay Gene’ Myth,” July 26-Aug. 8.)

More information regarding NARTH and Nicolosi’s work can be found at NARTH.com and JosephNicolosi.com.

I would strongly suggest that Register readers register their protest with the American Psychological Association for what amounts to an abuse of research and demand that the APA distance itself from this pseudoscientific presentation. For those interested, the website for the APA is APA.org.

I actually hope Register readers do contact the APA. When the APA responds that these charges are off the mark and refers people to the actual report, people will find they have been misled.

Fathers, sons and homosexuality

Today, Crosswalk.com published my article, “Fathers, sons and homosexuality.” It is also up at the Christian Post blog and soon a few other places. In this piece, I examine Joseph Nicolosi’s reparative drive theory via a very specific claim made recently in London while speaking to the Anglican Mainstream conference, Sex in the City. In an interview with David Virtue, Nicolosi said:

In other words, that fact remains that if you traumatize a child in a particular way you will create a homosexual condition. If you do not traumatize a child, he will be heterosexual. If you do not traumatize a child in a particular way, he will be heterosexual. The nature of that trauma is an early attachment break during the bonding phase with the father.

Many straight New Warrior brothers will tell you that they had attachment breaks with their fathers during this period. In fact, many straight men go to men’s groups to address those matters. On the flip side, this article focuses on a father’s perspective on his relationship with his same-sex attracted son.

Fathers, sons and homosexuality
The causes of homosexuality continue to both fascinate and divide people. Recently, in London, a conservative group of Anglicans, called the Anglican Mainstream hosted a conference to discuss the causes of homosexuality and promote change from gay to straight. Featured at the conference was American psychologist, Joseph Nicolosi. Dr. Nicolosi stirred much controversy when he said, without research support, that most of his clients show some degree of change in their sexual orientation.
Nicolosi’s views regarding causes of homosexuality are also controversial. In response to a question about the existence of a gay gene, Nicolosi said:

In other words, that fact remains that if you traumatize a child in a particular way you will create a homosexual condition. If you do not traumatize a child, he will be heterosexual. If you do not traumatize a child in a particular way, he will be heterosexual. The nature of that trauma is an early attachment break during the bonding phase with the father.

In a popular book written with his wife, A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, Nicolosi pegs the “crucial period” for bonding between father and son at “between one and a half to three years.” Elsewhere, Nicolosi argues that fathers of homosexual sons are unavailable, detached and/or hostile. To fathers in London, he advised, “If you don’t hug your sons, some other man will,” suggesting that male homosexual attraction is a search for a father’s love.
The father-deficit theory is considered outdated by mainstream sexuality researchers, but is popular among conservative Christians. This evangelical acceptance has always puzzled me because Nicolosi’s statements regarding the origins of homosexuality can be discounted not only by research but by common experience. His theory is contradicted in at least two ways. The first way should be quite obvious to Nicolosi’s audiences: there are many men who experienced poor fathering not only during the first six years of life but throughout childhood and are nonetheless, exclusively heterosexual.
Since many in Nicolosi’s audiences are either unhappy with their homosexual attractions or do not know many secure gay people, the second problem might not be so clear. In contrast to Nicolosi’s depictions of the typical family of gay males, many such men experienced loving, close relationships with their fathers throughout childhood with no break in attachment. Listen to one such father who spoke to me recently about his gay son.

When my son was 18 months to 3 years old (and on into childhood), we enjoyed a wonderfully close relationship. We explored the world behind the YMCA and called it travelling, looking for creatures in nooks and crannies. When it would snow, we bundled up and follow the same path. We hunted for snakes together in the creek, built a swamp world for various amphibians and generally loved each others’ company. Wherever I was, there was my son; as my wife would say, we were like “Peel and Stick.”
As he got older our relationship changed, but in a way that it should change. It matured into a friendship as father and son. After our son came out to us, our relationship did not change.

Does this sound like an uninvolved, detached father? This man’s son concurs with his dad’s assessment of the relationship. They were and are close, with no breaks during the period Nicolosi theorizes should cause homosexuality.
Devout Christians, the family attended conferences put on by conservative Christians who believed parental deficits were responsible for homosexuality. The answers they heard were very much like what Dr. Nicolosi promotes. These parents also took their son to a reparative therapist (i.e., counselor who holds to Nicolosi’s theory) who evaluated the potential for sexual orientation change. The father reported that it wasn’t helpful.

Not understanding the nature of his condition, we did take our son to a counselor. After several weeks of “therapy,” our counselor told our son that he didn’t know what to do. None of the stereotypes fit. Our son told his counselor that he had a wonderful and close relationship with his father and mom.

Although the parents hold the traditional Christian, non-affirming view of homosexual behavior, parents and son have maintained their relationship. What they all do much less often now is become preoccupied over causes and self-blame. The father sees a bigger picture.

Dr. Nicolosi gets it wrong to reduce the thorns in our sides/lives to a human event where we have but one chance to get it right. Does that sound like the relationship we have with our heavenly Father? God has allowed all of us to experience thorns, some painfully obvious, others less so. No doubt the thorns God allows are refining our character and leading us back to Him.

In fact, sexual orientation is quite complex. Most likely, multiple pre-and post-natal factors are involved in different ways for different people. One size does not fit all. What this means for Christian groups, however, is the stuff of controversy. For some, it means that homosexuality should be affirmed and Scripture reframed. For others, it does not lead to a change of orthodoxy, but rather to greater humility regarding the need for spiritual support to live a different and often difficult calling. What is not needed is adoption of simple, but misleading, answers.

Multiple pathways to sexual orientation, Part 3

In my 2002 article on ex-gay research, I cited a study by Nottebaum et al which explored change among Exodus participants. In addition to comparing gay and ex-gay groups on change, the study compared self-assessments of quality of parent-child relationships. Here is the portion of my article where I refer to this study:

Nottebaum et al. (2000) asked participants if they had good relationships with their mothers and fathers while growing up. The gay male/lesbian participants described a significantly better relationship with parents than did the Exodus group. The Exodus men
especially disagreed with the question. At least two broad possibilities
exist to help clarify this finding. First, the gay men and lesbians who decided to change had childhood experiences different from those who identified themselves as gay (and who continued with that identification). Perhaps those who seek reorientation really do demonstrate a childhood pattern similar to the one predicted by ex-gay theorists Moberly (1983) and Nicolosi (1991). Perhaps, however, those gay men and lesbians who did not seek change experienced more satisfying childhood relationships. If this hypothesis could be supported by additional empirical work, then perhaps reparative theory may only describe those gay men and lesbians who are significantly distressed by their sexual feelings. Another perspective is that each group interpreted their experiences in keeping with the theory of causation of same-sex feelings most acceptable to them. Given that many Exodus groups assert a specific reparative theoretical view of causation, the participants in Exodus could experience a need to reinterpret their experiences through this theoretical framework. Additionally, the report of the gay male and lesbian sample may then have been a better-than actual representation to avoid fitting the traditional stereotype.

Bell, Weinberg & Hammersmith’s research seems to support the former hypothesis and I should have cited those findings at that time. Please note that while it is possible that childhood disruptions with parents play a role in later sexuality, it is also plausible that childhood gender nonconformity could figure into negative parental responses to children (moreso boys than girls). Thus, negativity of relationship is present but not causative of adult sexual attractions. The narrative presented by a reparative therapist or ministry as a cause would seem quite plausible given the co-occurrence of negative interactions and socially nonconforming gender interests.
On point, the existence of same-sex attracted people without any trauma in their history seems to falsify this recent statement of Joe Nicolosi:

In other words, that fact remains that if you traumatize a child in a particular way you will create a homosexual condition. If you do not traumatize a child, he will be heterosexual. If you do not traumatize a child in a particular way, he will be heterosexual. The nature of that trauma is an early attachment break during the bonding phase with the father.

In Bell et al’s study, more homosexual men than heterosexual men described composite pictures of their father as being detached and hostile. However, 37% of heterosexual men viewed their fathers in the same way as the homosexual men (52%) did. All studies find overlap in the two groups. Clearly, there are straight men who have the “father wound” (just ask most any Mankind Project New Warrior) and gay men who don’t. For many men and women who seek therapy or are unhappy, the reparative narrative seems to describe their experience but that narrative may not have caused their attractions to take the directions they do.
See also, Part 1, & Part 2.
–Nottebaum, L. J., Schaeffer, K. W., Rood, J., & Leffler, D. (2000). Sexual orientation—A comparison study. Manuscript submitted for publication. (Available from Kim Schaeffer, Department of Psychology, Point Loma Nazarene University, 3900 Lomaland Drive, San Diego, CA 92106)

Anglican group hosts reparative therapy conference in London

Beginning today, the Anglican Mainstream is hosting a conference called Sex in the City in London. The speakers are Joseph Nicolosi, Jeff Satinover and Arthur Goldberg. A Christian Today article provides a description of the speakers about the content.

The Sex and the City Conference, hosted by Care and Anglican Mainstream, aims to help clergy, rabbis and psychologists among others to address issues like therapeutic approaches to same-sex attractions, mentoring the sexually broken, the sexualisation of culture, and sex and the Bible.
“We want to convey the message that change is possible,” said Joseph Nicolosi, founder of the US-based therapeutic organisation NARTH, ahead of the conference.
“Many people who have same-sex attractions are told you can’t change, it’s biologically predetermined, it’s genetically based, and that’s not true.
“After 30 or 40 years of trying to find the gay gene it has not been discovered and many people, especially young people, are being told that they don’t have a choice and that’s really tragic.
“Basically they are resigning themselves to a gay lifestyle not knowing that there are options for them.”
Nicolosi said young people were at risk of developing “self-defeating, self-destructive, maladaptive behaviours” because they were not being told of the emotional dangers of entering into homosexual relationships. He said research, including studies from within the gay community, had found that people in homosexual relationships suffer more from depression, anxiety and failed relationships than people in heterosexual relationships.

While virtually all others who write and work in the field of sexual orientation recognize that sexual orientation involves a variable mix of biological, contextual, cultural, and psychological factors, Dr. Nicolosi, Satinover and Goldberg want the world to know that there is no gay gene. Later this year, we will get more specifics about the genetics when Alan Sanders reports on his work. However, the best twin studies we have indicate around 35% heritability. Much is related to individual differences beginning in the womb. The research we have does not support the developmental scheme offered by the reparative therapists as being generally true or most or all gays. See the Reparative Therapy Information Page for more on this point.
Once formed, sexual attractions appear to be quite durable for most people. Recent research has found that brain differences between gays and straights associate with reported sexual orientation. These differences are quite large and make it clear that once formed, sexual attractions become automated. Some people spontaneously change and some seem to alter sexual responses with effort, although there is no reliable evidence that identifies the potent factors even for those changers. In any case, even if we knew the causes, we do not know that such knowledge could lead to consistent change.
Given that this conference is being sponsored by a Christian group, a related question I have is: Why is the basic message ‘change is possible?’ It seems to me that the basic message for a non-affirming group should be ‘a faithful Christian life is possible.’ Later, in the Christian Today article, Nicolosi says,

“The Christian view is to overcome your sin and if a believer believes that his homosexuality is a sin to overcome we are providing the ways with which he can overcome it.”

Surely he means behavior choice and not internal desire. Even Nicolosi acknowledges that most of his successful clients are still same-sex attracted. However, many people will read these promises and think they will hear about a way that the same-sex desires will be eliminated (overcome). This kind of confused presentation is what is so potentially damaging about these conferences and the ‘change is possible’ mantra. Many same-sex attracted people keep looking for the magic path to freedom from their desires. They drop lots of cash and time and untold emotional resources into approaches which may or may not have other benefits but which do not lead to elimination of their same-sex attractions. Many in frustration decide their religious tradition was wrong all along and leave the faith – any faith. Others keep searching and think they need to get “healed” before they can really enter life and pursue their life’s goals. In fact, what is possible is a recognition of what can and can’t be changed (or at least what is or is not within my power to change) and then pursuing a life that is congruent with one’s beliefs and values, bumps and all.