There is no firm evidence that sexual orientation can be changed through therapy, so mental health professionals should not tell conflicted gay clients that they can become heterosexual with such treatments, the American Psychological Association declared today.
In adopting a resolution, the APA’s governing council said some research suggests such “reparative therapy” could induce depression or suicidal tendencies.
A task force recommended that mental health professionals “avoid misrepresenting the efficacy of sexual orientation change efforts when providing assistance to people distressed about their own or others’ sexual orientation,” usually as a result of religious doctrine.
Of course worldly ways can’t transform homo- to hetero-sexual. It can only happen by a miracle of God’s grace. And as blessed Gabriel said to our Lady, “With God all things are possible.”
… but… that doesn’t mean God will transform the sexuality of everyone who asks, any more than he takes away cancer, etc. from everyone who asks. But read the WSJ article following this one on the blog.
I am not sure that psychology has ever cured anyone.
Psychology, psychiatry, curanderos, whatever.
That’s from 15 years in the field of adult mental health. Actually, I have respect from a good many psychologists and psychiatrists, and once knew a counselor looking to refer a client to a curandero. The problem is that all of these studies ignore the critical factor, that being the human will, in favor of viewing psychological treatment as though it were like taking a pill. However, the mantra that “homosexuality is not a choice” is so ingrained, so dogmatic, that the choices people do have are simply ignored. Homosexualist ideology has so deeply corrupted the public discussion as the make “discussion” a meaningless concept. What we have is propaganda, with “scientific” societies serving a propagandists.
[blockquote]The APA urged therapists to consider multiple options — celibacy or switching churches, for instance — for helping clients live spiritually rewarding lives in instances where their sexual orientation and religious faith conflict, the Associated Press writes.[/blockquote]
I almost don’t believe that celibacy is considered an option by these guys.
Alcohol treatment centers make a lot of money claiming only a 50% success rate. It would seem that money could be made by these centers if there was any kind of decent success rate with conversion therapy.
Dr. Joseph Nicolosi and associates have had remarkable success with their therapy techniques. He worked with a man in his sixties in Australia using Skype, who was able to recover from homosex impulses and internet porn.
I recommend Dr. Nicolosi’s book, Shame and Attachment Loss and Janelle Hallman’s Heart of Female Same-sex Attraction as well as the articles and resources at NARTH.com.
Many men and women have overcome the painful feelings, emotional responses, beliefs and as well as the compulsive behaviors. Same sex sexual feelings are not a fixed identity or orientation; they are a conditioned or learned response.
The concepts (‘gay’ sexual orientation, identity, etc.) were invented to propagandize the public and create an exemption from God’s moral laws. I Corinthians 6:9-20 includes everyone.
We are all disoriented if we rebel against God and must be re-oriented by God’s redeeming love and power, through discipleship in the Body of Christ.
I’m going to wade into this at the risk of getting clobbered, but there are some things I truly do not understand.
First, let’s assume a same-sex orientation is indeed innate and immutable. The largest study of this phenomenon was undertaken by Statistics Canada in 2003, with a sample size of 316,800. Self-described homosexuals or bi-sexuals were shown to be 1.7% of the population, with males higher than females. In the homo-not-bi population the numbers were 1.3% for males and 0.7% for females.
The 2006 Census in Canada found 0.35% of the population to be living in same-sex couples, both married and common-law, in a country where same-sex marriage was mandated by their Supreme Court some years ago.
However, it’s fair to say that males in general have an innate ‘promiscuity orientation.’ The essence of social stability is that we men [i]control[/i] that natural orientation, rather than celebrate it and promote it. The Presiding Bishop himself said in 2003 that had Gene Robinson done what he did, but with a [i]woman[/i] he probably wouldn’t have made it past the secretary’s cut.
The Episcopal Church … talk about the petting zoo of American secular liberalism. My goodness.
In my view, therefore, the “natural orientation” argument gets nearly no traction.
Second, and this is the really confusing part, all Queer Theory and most Gender Studies programs describe [b][i]all[/i] gender as a socially-determined [i]CHOICE[/i][/b].
So who’s wrong here? APA or numerous academics? Don’t any of them see the profound contradiction?
And in the bargain, why in the world is the Episcopal Church willing to trash not only the Anglican Communion but two millennia of biblical truth … for the sake of something on the order of 1% ?
Sorry, I’m not buying what the APA has to offer. This is the same organization that in the early 70s, when having its national annual meeting in San Francisco, changed homosexuality from a mental illness to an alternate lifestyle, with no research or documentation whatsoever to back up such change, other than anecdotal evidence coming from speakers on the floor of the meeting (duh – San Francisco). So to trust this organization to now go back on what it did so long ago (that it knows is not supported by anything close to scientific studies or research) is simply too much.
The APA, really? Not a very credible source.
From the abstract:
[blockquote][R]esearch and clinical literature demonstrate that same-sex sexual and romantic attractions, feelings, and behaviors are normal and positive variations of human sexuality[…][/blockquote]
Given the premise, it’s hard to imagine they would come to any other conclusion. For the report’s authors, it seems that once homosexuality was no longer be understood as [i]psychopathology[/i], there could be no reason to object to homosexual practice. Somewhat amusingly, they also refer, apparently without qualification, to Kinsey’s work as the beginning of modern research on sexual orientation. Well, he was certainly modern in the sense that he made sure his work reached the desired conclusions.
If you don’t get the diagnosis right how can you expect to achieve any measurable result?
http://www.churchoftheword.net
I just don’t believe the therapy works or else we’d see clinics open up everywhere like we did with alcohol and drug abuse. Those administrators want to fill beds. For instance, why don’t the reparative therapists help with pedophiles?
It’s a commonly held belief that pedophiles can’t change, but I’m to believe that heterosexuals can be turned into gays and then back into straights. I’m all for a therapy that works, I just haven’t seen one.
Note, “At most, certain studies suggested that some individuals learned how to ignore or not act on their homosexual attractions.”
That’s not bad.
And at:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/05/gay.to.straight/index.html
“Alan Chambers… ‘unwanted same-sex attraction'” …”The fact is that there are tens of thousands of men and women just like me who once identified as gay…For me and for these people, the truth is change is possible… about a third of those who try to switch their sexual orientation through the group’s ministries wind up doing so…We’re not talking a light switch that you turn on and off, we’re talking about very deep and complex issues that, I think, take years to resolve.”
Read the whole thing. Change is possible. It’s just very, very difficult.
What about articles like the one in the current issue of World Magazine?:
[i]Q&A: One gutsy psychiatrist has spoken out about homosexuality, but social and professional pressure has silenced others | Marvin Olasky[/i] and his book [i]Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth[/i]
The introduction can be viewed [url=http://www.worldmag.com/articles/15721]here[/url]
#7 Bart,
Great points. It all just seems to contradict each other, doesn’t it? Especially this bit:
[blockquote]Second, and this is the really confusing part, all Queer Theory and most Gender Studies programs describe all gender as a socially-determined CHOICE.[/blockquote]
On a social issues forum elsewhere, there was a post about Sonny and Cher’s daughter, Chastity, undergoing gender reassignment to become a man. The article said she has had been in a committed lesbian relationship. I posed this question to the gay forum participants, in particular: Does this sex change mean that her partner is now going to be in a heterosexual lifestyle? And if so, how could she really be a lesbian?
To their credit, none of the homosexual participants knew. All they said is, yeah, it’s confusing, isn’t it? Adding, of course, that there’s still “much to be learned about gender identity and sexual relationships.”
Well, if there’s anything good that can perhaps come out of this is that if the APA continues to say that everything is “normal” and nothing is “disordered” then it’s all up for grabs and we won’t need an APA.
Bart’s comments suggest the root deception of homosexualist propaganda. The whole concept of sexual orientation is bogus. What exactly is the difference between an SO and a fetish? Is the desire to be spanked an SO? If not, why not? There are plenty of people out there who get off on getting spanked, and fetishes can be as deeply engrained and as difficult to overcome as homosexuality. Most men are promiscuous if given half the chance and there is not an object or an activity under the sun that cannot be sexualized. Before this is all over, men are going to be fighting for the right to marry womens’ shoes.
I think that the question of whether reparative therapy increases or decreases suicide ideation is an important one. Both depression and suicide ideation are increased in the homosexual population. People try to say that it is because of societal condemnation but these effects are seen in cross-cultural studies. So it is very likely that suicide ideation might decrease with reparative therapy.
The sad fact is that the researchers and organizations like the APA are so compromised by liberal political correctness that a good study will never be published by major journals.
This article does seem to deal with the same report referred to in the [url=http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/24665/]preceding T19 article[/url].
The resolution in Appendix A of the actual report (page 120 of [url=http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbc/publications/therapeutic-response.pdf]this PDF[/url]) is interesting though. While it has to comport with philosophical materialism (its preamble almost reads like a litany of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_epistemology]constructivist[/url] affirmations), there is this:
[blockquote][T]the American Psychological Association concludes that the emerging knowledge on affirmative multiculturally competent treatment provides a foundation for an appropriate evidence-based practice with children, adolescents and adults who are distressed by or seek to change their sexual orientation[/blockquote]
Elsewhere in the report, the authors seem pretty clear that being [i]multiculturally competent[/i] would require at least a modicum of tolerance for the religious or spiritual dimension of a person’s life, too. It may be more a case of consistent application of constructivist notions of identity than anything else, but even that would be an improvement.
It’s interesting to read this same article in the Nashville Tennessean today. The main focus was on the counselor in PA and his successful efforts in helping his clients remain celibate in accordance with their religious views.
I was interested to see how they dealt with the Spitzer research — an impeccable study done by one of their own who started the study convinced that he would find that reorientation therapy didn’t work and in the end had to conclude that [b] if the person wanted to change [/b] then there was a reasonable chance that they could. Here is the money quote on how to dismiss your colleague without saying he’s a loony … from page 56
[blockquote] Recent Studies
Recent studies have investigated whether people
who have participated in efforts to change their
sexual orientation report decreased same-sex sexual
attractions (Nicolosi et al., 2000; Schaeffer et al., 2000;
Spitzer, 2003) or how people evaluate their overall
experiences of SOCE (Beckstead & Morrow 2004;
Pattison & Pattison, 1980; Ponticelli, 1999; Schroeder
& Shidlo, 2001; Shidlo & Schroeder, 2002; Wolkomir,
2001). These studies all use designs that do not permit
cause-and-effect attributions to be made. We conclude
that although these studies may be useful in describing
people who pursue SOCE and their experiences of
SOCE, none of the recent studies can address the
efficacy of SOCE or its promise as an intervention.
These studies are therefore described elsewhere in the report in places where they contribute to understanding
respondents’ motivations for and experiences of SOCE. [/blockquote]
In other words — they didn’t show it worked, it just happened at the same time — so the studies didn’t show that it worked, it just showed why some people wanted to do it.
And they want to be seen as scientific !
Well if the APA says so, it must be just a good as going to TEC for sound theology.