Tag: reparative

British reparative therapist may lose professional association membership

Fallout from the Patrick Strudwick sting continues. Strudwick presented himself falsely as a client who desired to change his sexual orientation to two therapists, Paul Miller and Lesley Pilkington. Richard Cohen acolyte, Paul Miller apparently avoided sanctions from his professional medical body. Now Pilkington’s case is being decided by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). In the UK, counsellors are not regulated directly by the government, but can become members of charity professional associations such as the BACP. I suspect Ms. Pilkington could still practice if she lost her standing in the BACP but it would cast a shadow over her.

If the news account is accurate, one can hear the reparative theory loud and clear:

Mrs Pilkington says her method of therapy – Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE) – is legitimate and effective. The therapy is practised by a handful of psychotherapists in Britain.

Mrs Pilkington, whose 29-year-old son is homosexual, said she was motivated by a desire to help others. “He [my son] is heterosexual. He just has a homosexual problem,” she said last week.

Mrs Pilkington has accused Patrick Strudwick, the award-winning journalist who secretly taped her, of entrapment. On the tape, Mr Strudwick asks Mrs Pilkington if she views homosexuality as “a mental illness, an addiction or an antireligious phenomenon”. She replies: “It is all of that.”

And then…

“We say everybody is heterosexual but some people have a homosexual problem. Nobody is born gay. It is environmental; it is in the upbringing.”

The SOCE method involves behavioural, psychoanalytical and religious techniques. Homosexual men are sent on weekends away with heterosexual men to “encourage their masculinity” and “in time to develop healthy relationships with women”, said Mrs Pilkington.

Mrs. Pilkington, who has a gay son, sounds like a nice lady. Perhaps, she has helped people with other types of problems. However, on this issue, it sounds to me like she could use some assistance. It also sounds like her objectivity might be effected by her personal situation.

In any event, I am ambivilent about this situation. I agree that professional associations may intervene where false information and potentially harmful techniques are being offered. However, she was set up by the journalist who did not actually participate in counseling. Those opposing her might have a hard time proving actual harm to Mr. Strudwick. If other real clients who say they were harmed have come forward, I think that would change the deliberations. 

Instead of removing her membership, the BACP could ask her to complete additional courses in sexuality and perhaps consult with religiously compatible therapists who do not use reparative therapy. Even if Mrs. Pilkington escapes penalty, as Paul Miller seems to have, the BACP could use the incident to advance a balanced position, such as this one from the APA.

NARTH 2010: Schoenewolf returns

About this time four years ago, I was debating about whether to attend the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) conference. I was scheduled to talk about the Sexual Identity Therapy framework. However, I decided not to go (and Scientific Advisory Board member, David Blakeslee, resigned from NARTH) after a controversy broke out over an article on the NARTH website by Gerald Schoenewolf, titled Gay Rights and Political Correctness: A Brief History.  

In essence, Schoenewolf argued that civil rights movements simplified complex issues, one of which was slavery. He wrote:

With all due respect, there is another way, or other ways, to look at the race issue in America. It could be pointed out, for example, that Africa at the time of slavery was still primarily a jungle, as yet uncivilized or industrialized. Life there was savage, as savage as the jungle for most people, and that it was the Africans themselves who first enslaved their own people. They sold their own people to other countries, and those brought to Europe, South America, America, and other countries, were in many ways better off than they had been in Africa. But if one even begins to say these things one is quickly shouted down as though one were a complete madman.

Schoenewolf attributed the civil rights movement to Marxism and then made a leap to the modern feminist and gay civil rights movements. NARTH was pretty slow to react and then defensive when they did. Schoenewolf’s article was eventually removed, without a significant rationale or apology from NARTH. The LA Times and other outlets covered the events and fallout. 

This year, Gerald Schoenewolf returns to the NARTH schedule with a talk sure to delight the home crowd – The Suppression of Psychoanalysis in the Treatment of Homosexuality. This sounds like a lament that psychoanalysts  are now discouraged from considering homosexuality to be a treatable condition. Ironically, the first suppressor of psychoanalysis in the treatment of homosexuality was Freud. In 1935, Freud corresponded with the mother of a homosexual man who had written him looking for psychoanalytic help for her gay son. While he said a few things to hearten the Reparatives, he was not ebullient about the prospects for analysis (Click link for a scan of the letter).

Dear Mrs. X (April 9, 1935)

I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you, why do you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime, and cruelty too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.

By asking me if I can help, you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way, we cannot promise to achieve it. In a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies which are present in every homosexual, in the majority of cases it is no more possible. It is a question of the quality and the age of the individual. The result of the treatment cannot be predicted.

What analysis can do for your son runs in a different line. If he is unhappy, neurotic, torn by conflicts, inhibited in his social life, analysis may bring him harmony, peace of mind, full efficiency, whether he remains a homosexual or gets changed. If you make up your mind that he should have analysis with me (I don’t expect you will!!) he has to come over to Vienna. I have no intention of leaving here. However, don’t neglect to give me your answer.

Sincerely yours with kind wishes,

Freud

P.S. I did not find it difficult to read your handwriting. Hope you will not find my writing and my English a harder task.

Source:

Freud, Sigmund, “Letter to an American mother”, American Journal of Psychiatry, 107 (1951): p. 787.

Sounds like he was suppressing her expectations for psychoanalysis. While we might quarrel with points of Freud’s statements here, his words are not a ringing endorsement for the treatment of homosexuality in the manner proposed by reparative therapists.

Disputed Mutability on Love Won Out

Dismuted Mutability is a blogger and a blog that I like to read. She provides insight into someone who has grappled with sexual identity issues in a refreshing and honest manner. Her last couple of posts are descriptions of her recent visit to Love Won Out in Indianapolis. Regarding her first post (general impressions), I cannot comment much. I did not attend that one and I am told there have been many changes in LWO since I attended in St Louis in February of 2006.

On change that has been made is that Joe Dallas is conducting the session “The Condition of Male Homosexuality” in place of Joe Nicolosi. I am posting here the link to DM’s review of Joe D’s talk. From DM’s review, the content has also changed, and in my view, for the better.

She begins with the good news:

IF you HAD to have a talk putting forward the standard developmental/reparative theory of male homosexuality, I don’t think you could get a much better talk than the one Dallas gave.

The rest of the post is well worth the read. I think she is very likely correct when she says:

I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that those who spend any time in exgay ministry or counseling are more likely to feel (or at least hope!) that developmental theories fit them.  After all, those who don’t feel they fit are likely to consider those approaches and the ministries that offer them a waste of time. For another thing, I would suggest that exgay ministries/counseling have a tendency to encourage a certain perception of one’s childhood experiences and parental relationships. Speaking personally, I know that I was coached to look at myself, my childhood, and my parents in a certain way by the exgay movement. Now, they might just be helping us to see what’s really there. Or they could be leading us to make a big deal out of all the ordinary imperfections of children and parents, and in some cases perhaps even something more unhelpful than that.  Anyway, my point is that there are excellent reasons for being skeptical of drawing conclusions about gays in general from observations of those who seek out and attend exgay ministries/counseling.  I think that being fully honest would require bringing this out clearly.