(This post has been moved up and republished)
For the foreseeable future, posts about topics related to my book-in-progress will come up frequently, punctuated with articles regarding my new medical interest – PANDAS. The book relates to same-sex attracted people who are in heterosexual marriage. There will be a significant section on theories regarding sexual orientation.
In that section, I will take up the problems of reparative drive theory and as such critique the primary means of gathering data for the theory – clinical experience. Reparative therapists base their formulations, not on several lines of empirical research, but on reconstructions from clients. This post will be a series of quotes from a 1984 book by psychotherapist Morris Eagle, titled, Recent Developments in Psychoanalysis: A Critical Evaluation and published by McGraw-Hill. In the section, I am referencing (131-140), Eagle begins:
I have noted above that according to most current writers, the essential factor in the etiology of developmental defects and arrests is early trauma of some kind…I have already noted (and will discuss again later in this chapter) that there is little or no evidence for these etiological claims.
Eagle believes that then current (in the mid-1980s and represented now by reparative therapists such as Joseph Nicolosi and Richard Cohen) psychoanalytic theorists miss the move Freud made from seeing the patients problems steming from actual trauma to intrapsychic conflict. Freud confronted the question regarding the veracity of his patients stories and concluded with varying degrees of conviction that the stories did not of necessity represent real events but rather patients’ mental constructions.
Eagle criticizes this view of etiology, saying:
In other words, what is invoked in the etiology of pathology is not intrapsychic conflict, personal meanings and fantasied interpretations of ostensible events, but the direct effects of supposed actual events (usually maternal failure – e.g., lack of empathic mirroring – of some kind) upon psychological development, relatively unmediated by personal fantasies and meanings. This kind of etiological explanation is similar in form to early Freud’s seduction theory and to pre-psychoanalytic accounts. It is a straightforward A causes B account, much as one would say that lack of vitamin D (A) causes rickets (B). (author’s emphasis)
To explain same-sex attraction, reparative drive theorists assert a set of developmental failures primarily involving the same-sex parent. These events are considered to be directly causative. What else can make of statements like this?
The child was not supported by his parents in his early masculine strivings, and as an adult, he is now in conflict with his normal desire to connect with other males.
A significant number of our clients report a family background which could be defined as narcissistic. In the narcissistic family, the child is placed in the communications structure of the Double Bind, or the “no-win predicament.” If he assumes responsibility for the fact that he does not feel loved for who he really is, the child is rewarded with parental love and attention (but of a narcissistic and malattuned sort). That is the nature of shame-assuming responsibility for “not having been lovable.” However, if he maintains his assertive stance, holding onto the integrity of his own perception and his own his internal state, he is punished with parental inattention and withdrawal.
To comprehend the profound gravity of this choice, we need to understand what we mean by a parent’s well-intentioned but malattuned love. When one is a very small child, parental malattunement feels like a profoundly painful expulsion, a “shunning” that is experienced as nothing less than hopeless abandonment. The price of choosing to maintain his own perception means, to the small child, having to confront the primal fear of abandonment-annihilation.
In the case of reparative drive theory, the parental failure comes from both parents – father gets a role in this psychoanalytic story. Eagle does not use the term confirmation bias but he notes the peculiar tendency of psychoanalytic theorists to ascribe meaning to historical events according to the analyst’s theories.
…so-called defects and arrests are not necessarily transparent rather involve the theoretical interpretation and judgment that certain behaviors are expressions, often indirect and subtle ones, of underlying developmental defects and arrests. What follows is that if one’s theoretical predilections are in a particular direction, one can view a particular set of behaviors as indications of a self-defects and developmental arrests, while someone with a different theoretical inclination will give a different diagnostic meaning to these behaviors…as Rangell (1980) has noted, the kinds of patients described as narcissistic personality disorders and as suffering from self-defects by Kohut and his followers have long been observed by many analysts who viewed them as neurotic rather than as warranting a distincy diagnostic category.
Searching for critical relational wounds (“bad enough parents”) has treatment consequences which Eagle believes leads to impossible expectations. Some people come in with clear knowledge of their history and desires to resolve their relationship to that history. Therapists should work with clients in this manner. However, some therapists press clients to adopt an explanatory framework which does not fit, or only fits with significant distortions or reconstructions.
Eagle questions the utility of suggesting to clients that their symptoms are tied in some direct manner to events, especially those before awareness. Can therapy really allow a person to go back and repair developmental arrests in any meaningful, real world way?
Many recent conceptualization of therapy suggest that treatment compensates for early traumas and the deficiencies they bring about. I have referred to this elsewhere as a “deficiency-compensation” model of therapy. However, it is likely that the salutary effects of therapy have mainly to do, not with eliminating developmental failures and structural defects, but with ameliorating the effects of the unrealistic anxieties and unresolved conflicts typically accompanying whatever failure or defects are one’s lot (author’s emphasis).
I share Gedo’s (1980) skepticism toward talk about resumption of developmental growth and the claim that psychotherapy somehow directly repairs developmental impairments and structural defects…As adults, we are not simply frozen at “arrested” points in childhood. Hence it is not at all clear as to what is meant by permitting arrested configurations to unfold as they would have when we were 1,2, or 3 years of age. What can such talk mean or refer to?
Eagle doubts that the benefit of therapy derives from the analyst and patient repairing the past via the present relationship. In this context, I am reminded of Richard Cohen’s justification for holding therapy on CNN – “It establishes a parent-child relationship. He didn’t get this from his own dad.” Being emotionally present for a client is important to serve present day functions but there is little evidence that therapeutic attunement in itself repairs historical deficits. He continues with this money quote…
The emphasis on early periods of development has led to unbridled speculations regarding supposed events and processes in infancy and childhood. Such speculations are often of an etiological nature or may simply refer to what presumably goes on in early development. What they all have in common is that, remarkably enough, they are entirely based on clinical work with adult patients and make no reference to empirical studies with infants and children, let alone long-term longitudinal evidence.
I probably should have led this post with this point. If you have read this far, this is a reward for doing so. Any theory that relies on the reconstructive memory of clients to open the door to the past should be doubted and pressed for confirming evidence. Critical events in reparative drive theory are proposed to occur prior to the age when most people can hope to recall (18 months to 3.5 years). The belief in their occurance comes from client reconstructions – a very selective sampling and subject to the therapist’s confirmation bias.
Eagle quotes Rubenfine (1981) with this caution:
under no circumstances are we ever justified in using our creative fictional ‘constructions’ about origins of pathology in the first year of life to serve as data for theorizing about early childhood development.
In short, given the reconstructive nature of memory, we cannot infer the past from the present with the kind of precision needed to craft dogma. Eagle has provided a solid critique of reparative type therapies which compel clients to emotionally relive the past and seek repair with an empathic therapist. Clearly, some good comes from these efforts, but, with Eagle, I suspect the empathy establishes the relationship and any good comes from present day strategies clients learn to navigate present life as adults.
Michael Bussee,
Maybe that girl Rita beating you at a game left a mark on your emotional memory. 🙂
I don’t remember playing anything with a girl when I was a boy, I don’t know what games they were playing. I remember most of us boys were hanging out in a bunch and had little to do with girls unless a teacher paired us with them for some purpose. This is the fascinating part – finding out what made us see girls as completely strange and attractive. It must be sexual difference and some typical brain development stuff.
I don’t think there are so many as there used to be who think attractions to one’s gender are diseased. I think what makes someone attracted to the other gender is also involved in what makes someone else attracted to their own gender. Maybe that’s why some talk about choice, because they assume based on their own experience that others are choosing their sexual identity. It’s important to see why some people feel no degree of choice and learn something about sexual development while at it. It will help people on all sides learn and will force society to deal with its own prejudice and harmful lies. It will be like society going through therapy.
Michael Bussee said,
These words suggest to me either a weak understanding of or a disinterest in the hard sciences regarding certain topics, which is perfectly fine, but which is not fine for others; or a disinterest in human behavior, which again is fine, but not fine for others.
In addition, it appears you have positioned yourself atop a moral high horse so tall you may not have a clear view of what’s beneath and so you read an evil intent into what you think you see. Is it possible you have no interest in seeing at all and so have concluded that no one else should either? Perhaps not, but the use of words like “offensive” and “prejudice” are common rhetorical devices often meant to stifle discussion rather than debating the points on their own merits.
If I’ve caused offense, I am certainly not happy about it, but your words suggesting offense won’t silence me. If you are offended, you have the option of not reading what those who are likely to offend you say. Or, you can engage in a discussion and agree to disagree. However, one ought not expect that because something might be offensive, it won’t be uttered. Of what use is such a forum as that?
Debates in other forums on other topics, the hot issues of our times–the stimulus or pork package (depending on how one views it), immigration reform, border control, bank and homeowner bailouts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the genocide in Darfur, the West Bank settlements, etc. would also bring about comments that might offend, but saying “that’s offensive” is not reason to stop debate.
This is, in part, a science blog; one of Warren’s major topics is sexuality. Comments about science research– hypotheses, theories, etc. about sexuality– are appropriate and to be expected.
We know, in a sense, the cause of heterosexuality–the evolutionary directive to reproduce, even if we haven’t identified the mechanisms, the specific cells/neurons that identify a target mate for reproductive success. Thus, scientists usually study the anomaly, not the norm.
So, since science hasn’t identified the cause of homosexuality, do you presume to tell scientists and those who read science research blogs that they ought not consider certain etiologies because they offend your sensibilities?
You seem to be saying, “Go ahead and study, but be sure you don’t propose a hypothesis to test which I don’t like; be sure you don’t come up with an outcome I don’t like.”
That’s just not the way it works.
Not to mention, the study of such helps us understand the development of sexuality in general. How is it that there is such a thing as “the norm” and what causes anyone to deviate from that norm? Whatever that deviation is.
I realize that “this whole discussion of what causes gayness is offensive” to some. On the other hand, it’s similarly offensive to dismiss this discussion of possible causes while science has yet to provide clear evidence of the origins. It is unscientific to rule out a possible cause without giving it due study and consideration.
Evan noted: “From my experience, boys are interested in girls way before puberty hits.”
I assume he is speaking of straight boys. At age six, I had definite interest in boys, not girls. The only interest I had in girls was how Rita kept beating me in the Spelling Bee.
This whole discussion of what causes gayness is offensive, because unlike heterosexuality, gayness is presented as some sort of brokeness or disease. It is assumed to be the result of trauma, developmental deficits, bad parenting, abuse, etc. It’s a illness model — and that reveals the underlying, unscientific (usually religious) prejudice.
Warren wrote,
Warren, I look forward to your posts related to your bookm and I’m equally pleased you are researching PANDAS. I was wondering if, as a mental health professional, you have studied the Borna virus and its role in mental health/mental illnesses?
A Google search on Borna results in a myriad of studies linking it to problems with mental health. Researchers know that it’s implicated in mental illness and behavioral disturbances but the mechanisms by which it operates is still a mystery. Each year, they add to their body of knowledge about this pathogen, however. This whole field of behavior and pathogens is exploding.
Karen K,
On the subject of developmental delays. Personally I noticed that men with deficits in self-confidence and who are anxious by temperament have a hard time adjusting to the world of men and going through all the steps that make someone evolve into a balanced adult. There is evidence that, for instance, (straight) men who are more masculine have a lower age of first sexual experience and a greater number of sexual partners than less masculine men. On the other hand, there is also evidence that individuals who are atypical in terms of gender traits are rejected, harassed and labelled by their gender peers, whether or not they identify with those labels.
We have debated in the past, on this blog, on the subject of homophobia. Homophobia, as far as a few studies show, is an aggressive reaction to stimuli that one perceives as confusing (or offensive) to one’s sexual identity. If I remember well the experiments, most men who reacted aggressively to self-identified gay men were those who showed signs of arousal when seeing men-to-men pornography. More recently, a brain study which identified the neural correlates of hate concluded that hate and love share many common areas. Actually, one could say after looking at the brain areas that hate is a reaction of rejection to something viewed attractive or emotionally binding (hate for someone who has a better job and is more successful, hate for someone who does not respond to one’s love, hate for someone to whom one is attracted to but is considered inappropriate).
I don’t think children could be suspected of being attracted to the atypical individuals they reject. This study and others were done on adults, so children most likely reject based on other feelings. So adolescence does make a difference in settling (or confusing) sexual feelings. But it cannot be ignored that rejection and harassment at any age can isolate an atypical individual and can make him/her miss some stages of development which depend a lot on socialisation. Someone who is isolated and rejected can hardly develop a sense of self-confidence, for instance, which is critical for men’s development. Early sexual experiences could play a role for some individuals, but it’s not so evident that early same-sex experiences could lead to adult same-sex attractions. Some adult same-sex attracted might have opposite-sex sexual experiences in their childhood, abusive or not.
Karen K,
From my experience, boys are interested in girls way before puberty hits. It could be different for different people, but I think attractions can be felt very early on (I felt attracted to girls when I was 4-5, then in primary and 2ndary school and so on). Boys are not interested in playing with girls because it’s not exciting (different play styles, dynamics, toys), but they are attracted to girls quite early. It could be, in some cases, that a boy who is too interested in girls very early on may push the hedonic setpoint in his opposite-sex attractions so high that in adult age he would need very strong opposite-sex experiences to feel attracted and aroused. But this is surely not the case for obvious gender-nonconforming boys, the so-called sissies. There are more gays and SSA-ed men than have been sissies, though, and that must have something to do with development.
Warren,
You write, “GNC has recently been related to pre-natal testosterone (T) levels.” I would agree with this. I am inclined to believe that GNC is biological. I was not nurtured into being a tomboy, for example. GNC, from everyone I know, is very personality ingrained–though it may be accentuated further by environmental factors (I saw that in my own life).
You write: “GNC could predispose to SSA via a sense of differentness from the same-sex in puberty (e.g., Bem’s theory).” This is more of what I am getting at. How the environment reacts to GNC and in turn how the person responds to the environment’s reaction to him/her.
GNC is a broad term. I was GNC-but I think for me and many others that it is merely a manifestation of normal femaleness/maleness. Its not that we were so much “gender non-conforming” as much as we did not conform to rigid stereotypes. We didn’t fall into the median on the Bell Curve, but we are still on the bell curve. People just get used to what is in the middle of the Bell Curve because its seen more frequently. I think we would see a broader swipe of what “normal” gender behavior looks like if we didn’t have rigid role requirements within certain cultures. That have seen this in some studies with girls who were very opininated and atheletic as 8 years old, but became more inhibited as they got older based on cultural pressure to fit other people’s expectations of what a girl is.
On the other hand, there are those who are gender-nonforming in the sense of wanting to be more like the other gender. So, one 14 year old boy I spoke to who dressed and acted like a girl because he felt so overwhelmed by what he believed was expected of him as a man. He wanted to be a girl to escape the impossible task of being a man. So environmental influences. I wonder if the studies make a distinctions between those who merely don’t fit the bell curve norm and so are labeled GNC, and those who exenuate their GNC because of other issues (like the boy above or girls who make themselves look and act like boys to avoid sexual abuse/harassment).
You write: “Storms in 1980 proposed something like this based on some erroneous data that gay males reached puberty quicker than straights. He thought the same association might work. However, newer better data find that straights get to the physical changes sooner.”
I am not sure what gays reaching puberty sooner or later than straights has anything to do with psychological development. It really wouldn’t matter when puberty hits or how it compares to anyone else. It would just matter where that person is psychologically. The question is really about psychological development at the time of puberty, not the timing of puberty.
Never mind, WArren. I remembered your end of January post on fetal T and the questionnarires. Thanks.
Warren,
I didn’t know these findings. Could you tell us more–the studies and the source?
@Karen K:
GNC has recently been related to pre-natal testosterone (T) levels. This was found with just one measure of T. GNC is also somewhat heritable. I am sure that some parents could encourage GNC as well although, it seems more common to me that parents encourage it but children who are not inclined toward GC resist. Nurture can only do so much. I agree that rigid ideas of gender are not helpful. Part of my issue with the reparative therapists is the implied normativity of certain gender roles (men go out in the woods and beat their chests).
We don’t know what the association means. It could mean that GNC is a sign of developing homosexual interest and for those who become homosexual, the environment did not alter that trajectory. For others, environment (which is decidedly on the side of straightness) overwhelms any pre-natal factors. OR on the other hand, GNC could predispose to SSA via a sense of differentness from the same-sex in puberty (e.g., Bem’s theory).
Don’t really know.
Warren,
Quick question–it does seem that gender nonconformity is common for those who end up with SSA. Why do you think that is? Do you associate it all with biology?
I believe the gender nonconformity is usually normal, but that certain families or cultures with rigid understandings of gender roles cause the problem, rather than the gender nonconformity itself.
Yet the reaction others have to the person who has traits that are, percentage wise, further on one side of the bell curve than the other, seems to have some effect. How do you see that related to SSA?
A few more random thoughts. One thing I wanted to mention is that it doesn’t really matter what actually happened in the past. We don’t have to have accurate recall of anything. Rather, it is our perceptions that really drive the boat. That is why digging into the past is not all that helpful anyway. Because what we are dealing with is the person in the present with currently held perceptions. If I believe I have been hurt by someone in the past I am going to have all the emotions and trust issues as if the event had happened even if it didn’t happen exactly as I remember it. So I think the question of “can we infer the past from the present” is not really important. Its what we think happened in the past that shapes us in the present.
Also, I know I touched on the issue of delayed development, but wanted to mention a few more thoughts. Really, development is merely about experiences or missed experiences. My sister is a foster parent to babies. She deals with infants who are delayed in their development because of abuse or neglect. One little boy had difficulty holding his head up–as though he were still an infant because he was left by himself laying in crib all the time. So his physical development was delayed from lack of exercise. My sister had to work with him to get him to an age appropriate place physically. Also, cognitively he was behind his peers because he did not receive the proper sensory stimulation he needed. So he was unresponsive. Once my sister started introducing him to stimuli–colors, toys, touch, sound, human interaction, he began to become responsive and more at his age level cognitively.
So also, there is no reason to assume that someone cannot be delayed on a psychological/social/sexual level. That is, stuck in a certain aspect of pre-adolescence, for example, that leads to less interest in the opposite sex. Its normal at a certain age to not be as interested in the opposite sex romantically. And, I don’t think the change in becoming interested in the opposite sex is all about the chemical changes at puberty–though its an aspect. There are a lot of psychological components involved in sexual attraction for both men and women that affect whether or not we will feel desire.
This is just random idea–but what if socially/sexually a guy was stuck developmentally at a state when most boys are not interested in girls. Yet, at the same time, its not uncommon for boys to experiment with each other sexually. Most boys lose interest in same-sex activity as they develop appropriately and hit puberty. But, what about a boy who psychologically has not caught up with his body’s puberty changes? And his interest still lies with experimenting with boys–only now with the intensity of stronger sexual desire. And on top of it he still is oblivious to girls? Wouldn’t a delay in psychosexual development also affect his physical attractions?
On another note, for someone else it could be a matter of simply what the brain associates with orgasm. Whether that is a fetish for something. Or, if sexually abused (for boys), associating arousal with a male presence. I know of one straight guy who became addicted to pornography. As often happens with such addictions, he started wanting to do more varied and extreme things to get a “high.” He finally sought help when he began to wonder what it would be like to have sex with another male and desiring homosexuality. It freaked him out, so he got help. I know another guy who was straight and had a girlfriend who went to a gay bar with his friends. He had no previous interest in homosexuality. But, was fascinated by all the attention the men gave him in the bar. He loved being the center of attention. That led to experimentation and he spent the next few decades fully emerged in the gay community.
Another thought, I don’t think the causes for SSA are necessarily the reasons why someone is not interested in the opposite sex. There seem to be two dynamics separate tracks going on simultaneously for many people. The reasons for my being SSA is different from the reasons for my difficulty in attraction to men. I think therapy would be more effective for those seeking opposite sex attraction, if more was done to address the separate issues around opposite sex relationships rather than always fixating on the same-sex attractions as if the resolution of those will lead to opposite sex attraction. That is aiming for bisexuality than necessarily heterosexuality.
Anyway, I don’t know what my overall point is. 🙂 These are just some additional thoughts.
Karen wrote:
Storms in 1980 proposed something like this based on some erroneous data that gay males reached puberty quicker than straights. He thought the same association might work. However, newer better data find that straights get to the physical changes sooner.
PS – I think chemicals have a lot to do with it. Oxytocin, vasopressin and let’s not forget everybody’s favorite dopamine.
concerned,
Thanks. I haven’t seen a child with problems of gender identity so I don’t know if an event like that would be so disruptive as to cause troubles regarding one’s own gender. But I have learned about the case of one man I shook hands with who had been harassed as a boy because he didn’t like football. He was called a sissy by the other boys, who rejected him. He grew up isolated from them and later found out he was attracted to men, which made him plunge into depression. Now he believes the reparative story with the gender deficit. Oddly enough, his older brother is exactly the opposite of him. According to both of them, they were treated differently by both parents, but who can separate how they grew up because of different parental treatment from how they were treated differently because they were different? Both of them might reconstruct their stories according to present efforts to relate to one another: the aggressive brother projecting his anger fueled by the jealousy of feeling left out of his parents’ attention and the meek brother trying to get a grip on his difficult situation in a way that makes it approachable.
I wonder if it’s really possible to recover to a good extent the memories from the first years of development. If you ask parents, everything was OK, except for the baby catching a cold, them not being able to sleep because of his/her cries, etc. Parents’ attitudes or their own point of view can distort understanding that period. Not to say that they don’t know what is going on in the nursery school or kindergarten environment, unless it’s very serious. Shy kids sometimes bury traumatic events inside themselves. Then if you see them later changing their behaviour you don’t know if it’s their temperament doing the talking or it’s trauma too. I got dismissed telling to my niece’s parents that handling gender-related shaming situations needs attention. She’s fine, she eats well, if you give her her favourite toy or sweet she forgets about it – parents said. I dunno, some people have children to solve their own problems… 🙂
This concept of OSA men with perceived masculinity deficit is fascinating. Wonder all the ways they could create in attempts to prove to themselves they were in fact the men they believed they weren’t. Sounds like adolescent initiation rites into manhood stuff to me. Has there been a study concerning whether or not there is a significantly higher percentage/incidence of male SSA in cultures/societies that DONT have male adolescent initiation rites into manhood, but instead have (and foster) extended adolescence? My guess would be even if there were such a study, no significant statistical correlation could be shown. Just thinking aloud here……
@PianoManKugie:
Of course this could be true. With reference to SSA, this presumes that perceived deficits of masculinity cause SSA. We do not know this. We do know that some who seek a great confidence in their sense of masculinity do not find change in sexual attractions and some say they do. As long as all we have are anecdotes and correlations, we do not have evidence to support much of anything. There is no plausible pathway from perceived masculinity deficit to brain wiring which would lead to the object of sexual desire being the same-sex as opposed to the opposite sex. Whatever the weak correlations mean, we cannot say at present that they are causative in any general sense.
Evan,
You bring up an interesting observation by your nieces situation. I think there are a lot of shaming actions that go on in the classroom and in the school yard that can have lasting effects on a child’s self-identity, if not their self-esteem If these situations are not handled in an appropriate matter by either school administrators or by the parents when the child is showing some form of discomfort with what has happened, I believe the scars can be life changing. I also realize that so much depends on the temperment of the child in the first place. How sensitive are they to the situation?
I wonder if it’s humanly possible to look for cause(s) and completely separate the search for causes from any search for blame. Maybe the causes don’t matter; maybe going forward is what matters (i.e. So now what?) not looking back. If parent-child interactions were a plurality in a particular person’s case/experience, it still can’t be “blamed” on the parents, because it takes three to tango, dad, mom, and child. I believe that’s true even in single parent homes, because none of us biologically comes from just one other human. Yes, isn’t it possible that the parents could be emotional messes and the child could still “overcome” all that. Isn’t it true that there are disciplined parents who have undisciplined children, and disciplined children who are disciplined because they’re rebelling against their undisciplined parents? And one child who is devastated by a “wound” with a sibling of the same sex with the same wound but a completely different response (One says “I’m not going to blame myself for my parents issues” and the other says to himself “It’s all my fault”?)? Or are kids really so vulnerable and impressionable to parents/significant caretakers that we all are such huge victims from our childhoods? Given even odds, could it be true that a quarter of kids will be most affected by their parents messes, a a quarter of kids will be messed up from their own messes, a quarter by both, and a quarter by neither? A son could have same sex parent deficit with dad but have that more than compensated for by a non-abusive non-molesting big brother or uncle or male teacher or pastor or kids PE teacher, etc. Yes? No? Maybe?
We’re this far along in the discussion and my brain just wrapped around the multiple meanings of the word ‘infer’. I was thinking more in terms of definitions 1 and 2 below. I’m most definitely opposed to concluding the past from the present. But I think I’m ‘down with’ definitions 3 and 4. We can speculate or guess the past but–we can’t conclude it. We must remain open to the uniqueness of every individual and we must remain aware of just how unexplored this area really is.
What was their age? Approximately.
residential facilities 6-12 years old
group homes 13-18 years old
Ann,
What was their age? Approximately.
Fascinating. What did they do?
In regrards to their perception of sexuality and feelings of love, many are open to connecting with anyone who shows an interest in them – this would include the same gender, opposite gender, staff, and volunteers. Physical and emotional bonds are formed, broken off, and switched quite often.
Ann wrote:
Fascinating. What did they do?
Side note: I have a 4yr-old niece who had her hair cut too short recently and she didn’t like it at all. It seemed to me she’s gone into a bit of grieving, she keeps wearing her bobble hat and is ashamed if someone takes it off. She’s also grown very quiet, which is very uncharacteristic of her. Later we found out her kindergarten teacher asked her in front of the class: are you a boy or a girl – because of her haircut. She became so ashamed that now she avoids her. I’m saying that sometimes both parents and caretakers can be really stupid in dealing with situations like this one and they may create shaming situations about gender roles when it’s unnecessary. It’s probably worse in facilities.
I have only worked as a volunteer but have done it for many, many years – yes the differences in the children and their responses can be very varied. I have seen the acting out in all ways – mostly anger and aggression. They medicate them so heavily that one can only wonder what is really the temperment and what is the medicine. Anyway, my observation is that many of the kids cross all boundaries regarding SGA and OGA, and contrary to what the rules are, the staff either turn their heads and pretend like they don’t see or they encourage a child’s belief that they are attracted to the same gender.
@Ann: Yes, and I agree with that as a general observation. However, I worked in one of those homes (my first job out of college) and was struck by the individual differences in the children. Some who were horribly neglected did not seem to be doing as badly as someone else who was not. We had a couple of kids who came from average homes and some from the worst abuse you can imagine. I would say that the (then) current environment played an important role in their behavior in addition to the prior maltreatment (or lack thereof).
Karen and Dr. Throckmorton,
This is a very good example of children brought up in foster care residential facilities (not homes).
@Karen K:
I know some SSA people and I have not one clue why they are SSA if the only area of scrutiny is a deficit or trauma. Like you, I am skeptical of any global theory of SSA, in part because of these people and in part because the research on correlates is methodologically inadequate and the results are mixed.
Warren,
Thanks for your helpful response. That makes sense. It sounds like you are open to various etiologies. But, that the concern is with a one-size-fits all dogmatic approach that is often found in certain proponents of reparative therapy.
I think someone can become very needy because they were deprived as children, and that in turn continues to affect their ability to relate to others, leading to more loneliness etc. And thus looking for love anywhere they can–or with the gender they perceive is safe. In this way, I think there is some truth to what some reparative therapists say. But, I don’t think the solution is necessarily reliving and repairing one’s childhood–but rather addressing issues of loneliness, neediness, relational skills in the present–regardless of how those may have come about.
In any case, as you said, it doesn’t explain why some from good homes still might have SSA. There seem to be a lot of tempermental similarities in some of the gay men I know and some of the gay women I know (e.g. tomboy profile, etc). Non-gender conformity.
Sometimes I get the sense that folks are looking for the holy grail answer in all this. But, there are so many differences and complexities involved. So many different possible etiologies that it seems to me each person should be evaluated individually. Just from the women I know, I can see various reasons why they ended up identifying as lesbian–and the root is not all the same for all of them. Though I see common contributors for some of them.
Sure drug use can interfere with almost everything it means to be human and grow in maturity. I see this as different than the kind of thing Eagle is referring to. Eagle refers to a perceived loss (dad didn’t spend much time with a boy so the boy becomes arrested in that stage of looking for daddy’s love). Worse, in my opinion, is the oral interpretation. An analyst may speculate that a person didn’t get nurtured in the earliest stages because that person is “needy” in the present. The reason for the neediness, as this line of thinking goes, is because the person is stuck looking for and “needing” nurturance to make up for what was not received in childhood.
This thinking undergirds so much reparative thinking. In fact, the “reparative drive” is the term borrowed for the supposed drive to make up for deficits in childhood experience. For Richard Cohen, it involves direct provision of the love and attention through holding. For Joe Nicolosi, it involves providing attunement in the session as if having a salient relationship with a therapist will somehow make up for the perceived lack of it with a parent. For Janelle Hallman, it involves a similar emphasis on the holding (emotional, not actual) environment with such things as giving clients momentos and gifts to provide a “transitional object” for a client.
And for all three, the unproven assumption is that these early deficits rewired the childhood or adolescent brain so that the neural pathway would respond to the same-sex rather than the opposite sex. We know the neural pathways and structures involved in attraction are about the same, if not identical for gays and straights. What is ignored in this paradigm is how same-sex attracted people get the same brain experience for the same-sex rather than the opposite sex.
I probably come across as unconcerned with parental closeness and trauma. I am not. I believe there is evidence that the brain responds in a variety of ways to deprivation, stress and deprivation. However, there is no evidence that I have seen for the sexual attraction pathway being one of those effects.
I am even willing to stipulate that some people become same-sex involved for reasons that involve a felt need for love rather than through a deterministic biological imperative. People really are needy. Why they are needy is a more involved question than simply saying, you must have had bad parents or depriving parents. Good parents produce borderline children. Good loving parents produce needy people. Some of these people go on to love anyone who will love them, leading to homosexual behavior.
Note I said some become SSA for these reasons. What the reparative drive paradigm fails to acknowledge or explain is how some people become gay who not only had loving bonded relationships with both parents, but perceived those relationships as they were – loving and bonded. All I have ever gotten from the key figures in that movement is skepticism that those people exist. And that reaction produces the most frustration and frankly backlash against reparative drive theory. I have seen families and marriages torn apart in the futile quest to find out who was responsible for a child’s SSA.
I didn’t mean that her use of drugs was an indicator of delayed development (though she started using while young). I mean that the drug use itself prevented her from normal social development. When you are doing drugs all the time, you are not experiencing relationships/life the way a healthy teenager normally does that would lead to mature development into adulthood. And, it wasn’t that she was mimicking youthful behavior. Though, I know older people who try to dress or act young because they have other issues. Rather, emotionally/psychologically/socially she was very much at what you would expect to see in a teenager and not a 35 year old woman.
There is a lot in your throughtful reply Karen, let me take just one for now:
Perhaps you know this person but I have to ask if you know that the 35 year is acting like she did at 13. I can think of other reasons for a 35 year to use drugs and mimic youthful behavior other than be stuck in her own developmental track. I know older people who had lots of training and good upbringing who do this kind of thing for reasons that can only described as contextual.
This is an interesting post that brings up several different issues. One of the quotes was: “What follows is that if one’s theoretical predilections are in a particular direction, one can view a particular set of behaviors as indications of a self-defects and developmental arrests, while someone with a different theoretical inclination will give a different diagnostic meaning to these behaviors.”
Isn’t that the age old problem with psychology anyway? Behavioral therapist are going to hyper focus on behavior modifcation. Cognitive therapists are going to focus on faulty thinking. Family therapists are going to fixate on genograms. Etc. Etc. I don’t think this is going to change any time soon. And often each has a slice of truth to it.
You write: “Can therapy really allow a person to go back and repair developmental arrests in any meaningful, real world way?” And it was also mentioned that “adults are not frozen” at certain developmental stages.
I guess I wonder what is meant by that? It seems that people do in fact become arrested in development. One client I saw had a history of trauma and drug abuse and ended up in the criminal justice system. She was chronologically 35 years old, but functioned like a 13 year old. She had her tongue pierced and acted like she was a rebellious teenager on an emotional and functional level. I think when someone uses drugs in particular– that there is so much of basic life that is not “picked up” on. Proper social development doesn’t happen. So in a sense, she was in her 30s needing learn all the things she should have learned several years before. Not just in terms of basics like responsibility and how to manage money–but on an emotional level, healthy adult relating.
Another quote was: “However, it is likely that the salutary effects of therapy have mainly to do, not with eliminating developmental failures and structural defects, but with ameliorating the effects of the unrealistic anxieties and unresolved conflicts typically accompanying whatever failure or defects are one’s lot .”
Can we really parse things so finely? Aren’t these somewhat entangled together? I don’t see it as an either/or –but rather that there is merit to both. What is a developmental failure anyway? It could be something as simple as failure to learn to trust others. In any relationship–whether as children or adults, we have different levels of trust based on our experience with other people and how they treat us. Some grow up seeing the world as a safe fun place. Others grow up thinking the world is a scary place based on experiences. If I have a systematic orientation toward distrust because of experiences as a child–isn’t that a form of getting stuck developmentally?
Of course, this is different from saying that failure to connect with parents causes homosexuality. I see a distinction between theories of causation for homosexuality that base everything on parent/child relationship, and theories that may incorporate the possibility of developmental factors along with temperment etc. Perhaps the issue is not that there aren’t developmental issues that can be addressed as adults, but the flaw is with oversimplifying the theory.
Also, one does not have relive the past in order to address possible developmental issues. My personal bias is that it doesn’t matter where, for example, trust issues come from. What matters is what the person is feeling and thinking in the “here and now” and addressing that.
I don’t know if you consider Hallman a “reparative therapist”– but she doesn’t fit in the box of Nicolosi. She doesn’t have clients relive the past or even talk about parent/child relationships unless the client wants to. Though she does see value in attunement. I see developmental arrest as being primarily about relationships–and being stunted relationally in certain ways. So simply feeling a therapist’s positive regard can cause growth in relational ability. In that sense, it could “repair” relational deficits.
On another note, the fact that some people do not experience a cessation in SSA even after addressing possible developmental/relationship issues may or may not tell us anything about causation–especially if one has been sexually active. Sexual activity itself affects the brain and that is something else that would have to be addressed aside from any developmental factors that may have contributed to same-sex involvement in the first place.
I don’t really have any dogmatic views on all this–but these are just some random thoughts that came to mind in reading this post.
Warren, its hard to tell from your recent posts if you feel that developmental factors have no influence on SSA whatsoever. It may just seem like that because you are pointing out the flaws in reparative therapy. Wouldn’t you say its both nature and nuture? And if some of its nurture, then there may be certain aspects to address there? If so, how would you approach addressing any of the nurture effects?