From the article Mind Games by social psychologist, Carol Tavris:
“A public unable to critically assess psychotherapists’ claims and methods for scientific credibility will be vulnerable to whatever hysterical epidemic comes along next.”(Tavris, 2003, 7).
Just felt like that was important…
Tag: Nicolosi
NARTH conference opens today in Denver, CO
Amidst the inevitable protests, the annual conference of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality opens today in Denver, CO with the theme, “Sound Scientific Research: In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” For NARTH, this would be a worthy objective.
Given the theme, one would expect a program with research presentations which support their reparative theory positions. Not so. A review of the program reveals no such sessions. NARTH’s approach to research is on display with their new “fact sheet’ on female homosexuality. My review of it is here and here.
Those looking for actual research regarding homosexuality would do well to consult primary sources among researchers. Those looking for an evangelical approach to matters of sexual identity would do better to avoid the NARTH conference and seek assistance from the Institute for the Study of Sexual Identity.
The Bieber study: A review revisited
A reader sent along a link to a review of the psychoanalytic study of homosexuality headed by Irving Bieber and reported in 1962. Titled Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytical Study of Male Homosexuals, the nine-year study of 106 gay men summarized the reports of psychoanalysts about their patients but did not interview the patients directly.
The pdf of the the review by George Carter, MD is here. Since it is brief, I am going to post it and then comment.
Homosexuality—A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals
Irving Bieber et al.
New York, Basic Books, Inc., 1962,358 pp.
A statistical comparison from questionnaires submitted not to their patients, but to a group of
psychoanalytic psychotherapists, gives much interesting information about 106 overtly homosexual male patients, as compared with 100 not overtly homosexual male patients (controls). Most of the study patients were seen once (13%), twice (50%), or three times (31%) a week for periods varying from months to years. The group included patients with character disorders, neurotics, and schizophrenics The questionnaires intensively covered wide areas of development and functioning including relationships between parents,. patient and mother, patient and father, patient and siblings; sexual development and current, functioning; choice of homosexual partner; relation to women; latent homosexuality, etc. The emphasis is on conscious present and past attitudes, experiences, and behavior of the subjects, and does not explore the therapist’s dynamic understanding of the material. It is notable that 74% of the therapists either did reply (55%) to, or answered simply “no” (22%) to the question: “Did the analyst feel the questionnaire explored the fundamental dynamics of the patient?” It is also difficult to evaluate the statistics at times. For example, the authors base some of their theoretical conclusions on the fact that they find ‘latent homosexuality” less frequently (in their controls) than is ordinarily reported in psychoanalytic literature. But the data collection method may not be psychoanalytic, since it is not clear that the reporting analysts asked their patients to free-associate! It is difficult to evaluate the results.
Nonetheless, the study does point up some interesting issues. It suggests most strongly that overt homosexuality is especially apt to occur among those exposed to certain constellations of early family relationships, including what the authors call a close-binding, intimate mother and a distant or detached father. There are many other interesting inferences, especially about prognosis and treatment. However, the authors’ stated basic theoretical conclusion that homosexuality is the result of hidden, but incapacitating fears of the opposite sex seems over-simplified and over-determined, since they started with this as a working assumption, but found direct evidence for it, as I understand it, in only about 70% of the studied group and in at least one-third of the nonhomosexual controls.
GEORGE H. CARTER, M.D.
One observation I had not noticed before relates to the evaluation of the survey by the analysts involved:
It is notable that 74% of the therapists either did reply (55%) to, or answered simply “no” (22%) to the question: “Did the analyst feel the questionnaire explored the fundamental dynamics of the patient?”
If most participants in the study did not believe the instrument captured the essence of the patient how can any conclusions be drawn from the results? There are numerous problems with this research as a study of causation, but this is another serious blow to the validity of the approach Bieber used.
The Bieber study is often cited as a foundation for reparative drive theory. Bieber, like modern day reparative therapists, believed that a “constructive, supportive, warmly related father precludes the possibility of a homosexual son; he acts as a neutralizing, protective agent should the mother make seductive or close-binding attempts.” As the reviewer above pointed out, Bieber went into the study believing that a fear of women as a reaction to a too close mother, was at the root of male homosexuality. He believed that the father could bring the boy out of this problematic attachment, if he was “warmly related.”
The reviewer hints at but does not elaborate on the confirmation bias at work here. Bieber believed homosexuality was the result of a certain set of family forces and found what he expected to find. As Carter points out, the patterns were not universal and existed in the heterosexual controls as well.
However, despite the problems with validity, no follow up, no direct questioning of patients, etc., Bieber made a conclusion which continues to have influence in the modern ex-gay movement. The concept of the father’s intervening role with the overinvolved mother can be seen in the masculinity enhancement approach to reparative therapy. If you make a man more trusting of men (as dad should have done), then you give a man the courage to distance himself from mother (women). Once distant from mother (women) and in the world of the father (men), he loses his fear of being engulfed by mother (women) and finds them appealing. I think the appeal of the New Warriors Training Adventure comes from this view of masculinity. The Mankind Project view is that women have prevented men from being initiated into manhood. Only a man can initiate a man. So since by (reparative) definition, SSA men are fearful of mother (women), the need is to initiate them in the world of men (father) by other men (pretend fathers). What I have never heard addressed by reparative advocates is why these family constellations mark both same-sex and opposite-sex attracted men. If this set of factors was determinative in some general way for all same-sex attracted men, then why do we see SSA men who do not have these backgrounds and OSA men with them?
Psychoanalytic theory and the etiology of homosexuality: What does research say?
Does research support psychoanalytic explanations for homosexuality? In one recent exchange at the blog, Ex-Gay Watch, NARTH Scientific Advisory Board member, Jim Phelan advanced psychoanalytic theory with reference to a book entitled, Freud Scientifically Reappraised: Testing the theories and therapy, by Seymour Fisher and Roger Greenberg (1996). The 1996 edition is an update of their initial report in 1977. Specifically Dr. Phelan said that Fisher and Greenberg concluded that empirical research supported the Oedipally based Freudian conception of male homosexuality being derived from a distant or negative father and an overprotective mother – the so-called “classic triadic relationship.”
I have expressed reservations about the psychoanalytic model before on this blog. Rereading Fisher and Greenberg refreshed my memory about why I do not believe the evidence for the theory is strong.
Regarding male homosexuality, Fisher and Greenberg said on page 139,
The post-1977 material we have reviewed concerning male homosexuality has narrowed the apparent support for Freud’s formulation in this area. Previously, we regarded the empirical data to be congruent with with Freud’s theory that male homosexuality derives from too much closeness to mother and a distant negative relationship with father. As noted, the increased pool of data available reinforces the concept of the negative father but fails to support the idea of the overly close, seductive mother…So we are left with only one of the major elements in Freud’s original formula concerning the parental vectors that are involved in moving a male child toward homosexuality. This reduction in confirmed points on the graph makes it all too easy to conjure up alternative theories of homosexuality that could incorporate the “negative father” data…There would be no need to appeal to the Oedipal image of a son competing with his father for mother’s love.
And so Fisher and Greenberg suggest that the evidence they reviewed supported a correlation between negative fathering and adult homosexuality but not the Oedipal drama surrounding mother. In addition to this limitation of psychoanalytic theory, there is no need to limit theorizing to thinking that poor fathering causes homosexual attractions in some general way for all same-sex attracted men. The empirical work is not able to specify well where the father-son relationship may have faltered. When sons recollect poor relationships with father, the questionnaires infrequently capture when the bad relationship occurred. For many men, I have spoken to and worked with, the bad relationships that are reported came after the emergence of homosexual interests, often in young adolescence. Furthermore, a sizable number of homosexual men report no such disruptions ever.
Fisher and Greenberg acknowledge the deficits in the research. Regarding early research (pre-1977), they noted:
…this entire body of literature is based on a strategy of asking adult homosexual subjects (and the adult heterosexual controls) to remember how their parents treated them during childhood. The questionnaires made such inquiries as, “Was your mother overly close to you?” “Was she intrusive?” “Was your father cold?” “Was he weak?” “Was he distant?” (p. 136).
The authors are skeptical that this strategy is sufficient to address the theoretical formulations that fathers were in fact all of the traits described. Furthermore, the authors pointed out four major methodological problems with the early research.
1. Some of the studies were based on highly selective samples (e.g., homosexuals in treatment or institutionalized for some reason).
2. The definitions of “homosexual” were in some instances so vague that one cannot distinguish whether subjects were possibly bisexual or had simply experimented on a limited basis with homosexual acts.
3. Bias was introduced into responses because some subjects were in psychoanalytic therapy and therefore had already been indoctrinated with Freud’s theory of homosexuality.
4. Few attempts were made to differentiate subjects with reference to mediating variables such as degree of integration into the homosexual community, age at which consistent homosexual behavior began, or degree of masculinity-femininity.
For me, these are crucial research issues that should make anyone very cautious in describing the body of research as supporting a conclusion. Even so, Fisher and Greenberg lent support to the observation of significant deficits in father-son relationships with male homosexual sons. Unaddressed is the issue of direction of causal relationship. Did the research identify the cause of homosexuality being poor fathering or on the other hand, can we tell whether fathers and sons were disrupted due to the emerging behavioral and sexual differences of the sons? The answer to both sides of that question is no, we can’t tell. And as Fisher and Greenberg note, with the mother dimension in serious question, the reparative/Oedipal explanation involving father is weakened. It may be that fathers are involved in cause but in some other more peripheral way (e.g., they do not support traditional heterosexual norms) or it may be that father-son relationships are strained but not with causal implications at all.
As for research regarding lesbians, the psychoanalytic notion is similar. Conflicted mother-daughter relationships are implicated, along with negative fathers. However, Fisher and Greenberg did not find support for the mother-daughter dynamic but did find a weak relationship between lesbianism and negative fathers. The same research cautions mentioned with regards to gay males applies here.
What can we conclude? Very little, in my opinion. It is inconsistent with the most charitable reading of what is not very good research to say psychoanlysis is supported as to etiology of homosexuality. In a future post, I hope to look at research since 1996.