Ex-gay spokesman John Paulk left his wife and three sons after more than 20 years of marriage and rejoined the gay community. He has renounced his former married life to a woman and is now discouraging others from attempting change.

Long ago, John emerged from a very troubled past. Prior to his Christian conversion, he assumed an identity as “Candi,” a cross-dressing and drug-using prostitute, immersing himself in the wilder and more anti-social aspects of the gay world. But his Christian conversion led him into a stark change: marriage with Anne, a former lesbian and a committed Christian woman dedicated to an orthodox understanding of family and sexuality, with whom he raised three sons, now teenagers. He also had a key position with Focus on the Family, where he became a well-known media figure testifying to his commitment to heterosexual family life and the traditional, Biblical understanding of sexuality, which holds that a gay identity is a false construct, not part of our human design. But now, all that life has crumbled.

As a reparative therapist who has worked with thousands of homosexually oriented men seeking change, I believe I am in a unique position to speculate on these recent events.

First, John’s story is a cautionary tale about ex-gay celebrity. There is an inherent risk in the ex-gay movement’s reliance on any public spokesperson.

Second, in his testimony, John advises against Reparative Therapy, but he himself has never been in Reparative psychotherapy. Rather, his sexual-identity change evolved as a result of his Christian conversion.

As John tells his own story, he is a man who always felt unloved and who always searched for identity and belonging. I will not speculate about his own interior processes, because I do not know them. I will, however, speak of psychological patterns I have seen in other SSA (same-sex attracted) men who have gone from “ex-gay” back to “gay” in their lifestyles.

For many SSA men, the deepest problem they must wrestle with is not sexual identity, but core identity. The original source of this struggle is not the more obvious problem in bonding with the father, but a breach in the primary attachment with the mother. For these men, their deepest-level problem is not about sexual orientation but about something more fundamental: identity, attachment and belonging. Gender-identity conflict and attraction to men are only surface symptoms. This is the problem that the media chooses to ignore, and which both sides of the debate fail to acknowledge.

As such a man’s identity evolves, there will be an excited “discovery of my True Self,” followed by disillusionment, then a new “real discovery of my True Self,” and then again, disillusionment. At the base of this desperate search is the anguished grasp for a stable personhood, a profound emptiness and beneath it, a self-hatred. That self-hatred is often expressed in deconstructing and condemning every previous aspect of the person’s own former life, including the influence of persons most near to him.

Radical shifts in “the discovery of my True Self” are associated, in some such people, with Borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder and gender confusion, since gender identity is built upon an earlier foundation of self-identity. A fragile self-identity makes the later structuring of gender identity particularly perilous.

The restlessness such people feel is shown in a chronic state of dissatisfaction; in the narcissistic expectation that “if others really love me, they must take this pain away from me; and they [or what they stand for] are responsible for my pain.” When others fail to do this, there is a deep sense of betrayal; betrayal that these individuals failed to take away the core emptiness, and so the person in conflict may become angry at the people that participated in his former life. The pain of an identity search and the need for escape from the ordinariness of life can be alleviated for awhile by adulation. The narcissistic inflation found in celebrity, for example, can be an intoxicating balm.

This periodic disillusionment leaves behind devastated individuals who have invested deeply in the person; in John’s case, Anne, his wife of 20 years.

The gay community wants to frame changes from ex-gay back to gay as proof that people who experience SSA were simply designed and created for homosexuality, but we would be deceived if we believed this simplistic paradigm.

Where core identity is the foundational problem, we suspect a breach in the primary attachment with the mother. From my clinical experience, there is a particular kind of client who, although he is deeply dissatisfied with gay life and does succeed in developing good heterosexual functioning, will, over time, struggle to muster the self-discipline and maturity to put in a hard day’s work, come home to wife and family, help the children with the homework, have dinner and settle down to a good conversation with his wife, and go to bed. Such a life of day-to-day investment in one’s loved ones seems too confining: it is boring, lusterless, unexciting, “just not enough.” Underneath the boredom and restlessness remains this deep, chronic dissatisfaction.

It’s not just about needing to find a partner of a different gender; it’s about getting attention, flirting, being made to feel special, distracting oneself from one’s chronic dissatisfaction with life through parties and other high-animation activities, such as the gay community offers on its well-known, drug-saturated party circuits. I suspect that “excitement” was what John was looking for when he went to the gay bar in Washington, D.C. many years ago, just after speaking at a Love Won Out conference, when he created a public-relations crisis while working for the ministry Focus on the Family. I don’t believe John was there looking for sex. I suspect he was bored with the Christian community and its expectations – I believe he sought diversion, flirtation, adventure, and – a favored word in gay politics- “transgression.”

Of course, every shift the person makes from “I thought I was such-and-such…” to “Now I really know who I am,” will always have its cheering admirers.

Who is the “real me” — the ex-gay, or the gay man? Each man will decide for himself.

Reflections on the Life and Legacy of Joseph Nicolosi, Sr.

An Interview with Linda Nicolosi

by Christopher H. Rosik, Ph.D.
Fresno, California

Reprinted from the 2020 issue of the Journal of Human Sexuality

Linda Nicolosi is the widow of Joseph Nicolosi, Sr., and served faithfully alongside him for 39 years of marriage before his untimely death in 2017. She is currently republishing all four of Dr. Nicolosi’s books under her own imprint, Liberal Mind Publishers. The books are available through josephnicolosi.com, where many of her late husband’s articles also remain available. In this interview, she shares her recollections of her husband, their involvement in the early years of NARTH (now the Alliance), and her observations about the current state of the mental health field for those providing care for persons with unwanted same-sex attractions.

Linda, I want to thank you for consenting to this interview, which I’m sure the journal’s readership will find enlightening. I want to start in the beginning. Could you tell us about your personal background (birthplace, childhood family, formative experiences as a youth, etc.)?

I was born in New York and grew up in a Christian family with traditional values. I was educated at a private Christian girls’ boarding school started by D. L. Moody, a well-known evangelist, who first opened the boarding school as a girls’ seminary. Today, the school has become exactly the opposite—militantly pro-LGBT-agenda and anti-biblical.

During those years at the school in the early ’60s, I got to see firsthand how the culture was changing. As a student, I was beginning to experience the pressure of political correctness and to feel constrained and angry that common sense views of the world were becoming unfashionable and verboten. I felt a sense of nostalgia, even then, that D. L. Moody’s Christian vision was slipping away and that the people around me were simply not noticing or caring what was happening.

There is one incident that stays in my mind. I was a senior, soon to go off to college, and the school had invited Rev. William Sloan Coffin, a very popular minister, to give a speech to us girls. He told us that he believed the Bible didn’t forbid unchastity for unmarried people, as long as they loved each other. The other girls swooned—here was this handsome minister encouraging us to do exactly what we wanted to do and giving us biblical justification!

I remember thinking at the time, “Something is wrong with this picture, when adult authority figures are not strengthening our self-control by their teaching and example, but instead are encouraging us to do what we want and to live as we want.” That incident planted a seed in my mind that something was radically changing—not just among the younger generation, which is always, of course, a rebellious one—but among the adult authority figures who should be protecting us from our own passions. After all, I had grown up watching The Mickey Mouse Club and Zorro and The Beverly Hillbillies when I came home from school. It was a simple, sweet world where teachers could still get away with rapping your knuckles if you were disrespectful! And it was rapidly becoming something else.

How did you come to meet Joe? How did you come know he was “the one” for you?

We met at a psychology conference in Long Beach, CA, when I was starting out in a master’s in psychology, a career which I later decided to abandon. I immediately appreciated Joe’s intelligence, humor, inquisitiveness, strong family values, and his iconoclastic nature. He was funny, irreverent and “out there.” Yet he had a strong “center” and values that he did not compromise on, especially in terms of his sense of duty towards family.

What are your recollections about how Joe became interested in the psychological care of those with unwanted same-sex attractions? How did you feel about this as his wife?

At first I was not sure about accepting his view of the SSA issue, because I had been educated to see it from a liberal perspective. But even then, I had an uneasiness about what I was learning in school. Something about it didn’t match up with reality, and I felt annoyed that I had to spout back the “right” philosophy to get an A from my psychology professors at Cal State Long Beach. I indeed got the A’s, but I had to regurgitate their agenda. This was true in Gender Studies and Feminist Studies especially.

Joe got interested in the subject because he had several clients with SSA and he saw how closely they fit the classic family pattern, but because he hadn’t been taught about the subject in grad school, he had to learn about it on his own. He became curious about why he hadn’t been taught about the rich clinical observations in the psychodynamic literature and he began to suspect a politically motivated “forgetting” within his profession. How right he was!

How did NARTH get started? Many Alliance members know that NARTH was founded in 1992 by Benjamin Kaufman, Charles Socarides, and Joe, but among these three giants of free inquiry, who approached whom? How long did it take to birth the organization?

I believe it was Ben Kaufman who first approached Joe. Ben related how he had acted as a Good Samaritan in giving mouth- to-mouth resuscitation to an accident victim, but then when he wanted to know the man’s HIV-status, so he could protect himself if necessary, the hospital refused to tell Ben because of the special privacy protections given to patients in response to lobbying efforts from the gay community. That was yet another incidence of common sense yielding to political correctness. Ben, Charles, and Joe knew they needed to rally the mental-health community to protect their rights to offer treatment, as the gay lobby’s power grew and slowly began a professional and cultural stranglehold.

What were the organizations’ main challenges during the early years?

Money—NARTH was broke. Joe, myself, and our son Joe Jr. folded and stuffed the NARTH Bulletins on our kitchen table. I wrote the articles. But we had a sense of mission that it had to be done.

You were very involved in NARTH’s early years as well. Tell us a bit about your role in supporting Joe and the organization.

I had always wanted to do something of value in my life, something to promote the truth. Just “making a living” would have never satisfied that need. My mother’s family had been missionaries and ministers, and I think their spirit came into my spirit and drove me to pursue this work. So, I did virtually all the writing and editing for NARTH.

We all have a designed and created nature, and when we conform ourselves to that truth, we live our lives most fully. Because the world was losing its ability to perceive this truth, I felt driven to write about it and to help Joe in his work. He had a remarkable clinical astuteness, as well as great patience with people and empathy for them. Over and over he would tell me, “I love my work.” Sometimes he would cry when he would tell me how some of his clients had been neglected and abused as children.

What are some of your more memorable experiences?

I worked extensively with Robert Spitzer to get the Spitzer study prepared for publication and published. That was considered a landmark study at the time, though Spitzer later became concerned that his interview subjects might not have all been frank with him, and, as he was under strong pressure from the gay community—which greatly disliked the results—Spitzer later asked the journal’s editor to withdraw the study. The editor wisely refused to do that. I wrote an analysis of my time working with Spitzer, which was published at The Bob Spitzer I Knew—Crisis Magazine (https://www.crisismagazine.com/2016/thebob- spitzer-i-knew). Spitzer, many people like to forget, was the same person who was the driving force to remove homosexuality from the diagnostic manual, and also the person who told me, for publication, years afterward, “In homosexuality, something’s not working.”

Joe would also want me to mention a little “coup” I had while I was studying the professional journals for material for the NARTH Bulletin on homosexuality. I was the source of what The National Psychologist called a “public relations nightmare” for the American Psychological Association. Not a bad thing to be able to do!

I had alerted talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlesinger about an article published in an APA journal entitled, “A Meta-analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples.” After I exposed it, the study drew the attention of Congress, which called for an investigation.

The outrage focused on the authors’ conclusion, based on their analysis of child- molestation studies, that “the negative effects [of sexual abuse] were neither pervasive nor typically intense.” One of the study’s authors, Robert Bauserman, was openly associated with the pedophilia movement. As The National Psychologist reported, according to the study, sexual relationships between adults and children are not as harmful as once believed, and not all childhood victims of sexual abuse necessarily suffer mental illness as a result. . . . The uproar which followed could be seen in U.S. media and from Berlin to Bangkok. But poor Dr. Laura paid dearly for that uproar. The gay movement turned on her with a vengeance, and before long, her talk-show career was over.

Another thing I learned during my NARTH years was that there is a ripple effect in society when homosexuality goes from being compassionately tolerated—i.e., as an unfortunate situation for which we have sympathy and understanding—to being “celebrated” as a positive good.

As one example: same-sex attraction, particularly in men, threatens friendship—the natural and beautiful bond of camaraderie that should always be free of eroticism and even the suspicion of eroticism. Thus, SSA begins to break down the social order and push society into pansexuality. Any relationship, particularly a healthy, innocent mentorship, can now be suspected of being erotic, because sex now can “legitimately” occur between people of the same gender.

During my years with NARTH, I also came to a greater appreciation of why Jewish tradition has required separation and division—the separation of male from female, good from evil, sacred from profane, life from death. Without those fundamental separations, civilization begins a slow slide into barbarism. We see that today in society’s denial of gender differences, and in the sexualization of children who aren’t left alone by adults to be children, while adults themselves are acting like kids! I think of Sen. Elizabeth Warren telling a transgender child on TV that “if I get to be president, I’ll come and ask for your personal approval before I nominate an education secretary.” What happened to respect for the wisdom of adults? Not to mention, of course, that a nine-year-old boy can hardly be trusted to decide that he “is” a girl, and thus set himself on a lifelong course of sterility, surgical mangling of his body, and hormone treatments.

As my aged mother-in-law used to say, “It’s a crazy world.”

How did Joe’s Catholic faith influence his life’s work of helping men with unwanted same-sex attractions?

He saw the world as designed, and God—not man—was the designer. He knew we cannot escape our human natures, which are inevitably gendered.

I twice had the pleasure of having lunch with you and Joe at your home in SoCal. One of my main recollections of our time together was how the Joe at home was such a gentle soul, with a particular interest in painting and growing his garden. This was a different Joe than I had typically seen in his sometimes-outspoken public presentations and certainly unrecognizable from the Joe that was being demonized by the gay activists. What can you share about this side of your husband?

Because Joe had many interests that were not typically masculine—he loved art, opera, and cooking—he knew firsthand that a man can be gender-atypical in some ways (that is, esthetically oriented) and still fully embrace his masculine nature. His father gave him that gift, because although his father was tough, he delighted in Joe and would have given his life for him. So Joe had an interesting combination of masculine strength and Alpha-like dominance, but yet another side of feminine tender-heartedness and great affection, especially for children and animals.

I recall Dean Byrd often asking APA folk, “Is there a place for someone like me in the APA?” In this regard, was Joe hopeful or pessimistic about the future of organized psychology? Did he have a belief about where the field of psychology was heading and what was going to happen to clinicians doing this work?

Joe saw that in the short term, things were going to get ugly, and they have. But he believed that reality ultimately comes back to our awareness, and that the truth will reassert itself at some point.

Would the recent explosion in trans activism within psychology and medicine have surprised Joe?

Joe wouldn’t have done well with what’s happening now, because he had little patience for hiding, mincing words, compromising on the truth, and playing nice with falsity. He would have probably gone on TV and said something, in response to a provocative question, that would have gotten him kicked out of his profession. He was rather Trumpian in his tendency to just say what he thought and let the chips fall where they may. In fact, it was me, throughout his career, always trying to soften his bluntness and the potential for abrasiveness that came with his speaking very forthrightly.

It has now been a few years since Joe’s sudden passing, and his loss is still felt by all who knew and cared about him. Could you tell us about your experience being with him during his illness and how you are doing now?

His illness was only for a couple of days, as he died of a virulent strain of the flu. Up to that time he had been going to the gym and working his usual long hours. He died with his boots on, as they say. In some ways that suited his nature as he had little patience with illness or any restriction on his Type-A personality.

I am doing well enough, although a day does not go by that I don’t think of my husband. We were together about 40 years.

Although some have distanced themselves from Joe’s innovative efforts in providing professional therapeutic care for unwanted same-sex attractions, what do you anticipate will be his ultimate legacy?

I think his main legacy will be that he told the truth about the causes and nature of homosexuality.

What are your current interests and involvements?

I am republishing Joe’s books, which were banned by Amazon even though they had been selling very well. A gay activist complained about them, and Amazon caved in and dropped them. I am working on a final book, “The Best of Joe Nicolosi.” I’m maintaining Joe’s website, josephnicolosi. com.

Is there anything else you would like to say to clinicians and other Alliance members doing work in this arena?

Yes. As I reflect on what’s happened to the mental-health profession, I lament the loss of those precious psychoanalytic insights in the now-forgotten clinical literature—the brilliance of the old analysts and their advancement of our understanding of human nature. Unfortunately, a lot of their brilliance is buried under dense technical language and is not accessible to the layman, or even today’s clinician. I’ve tried to wade through it myself and frequently given up in frustration.

I think this shift in the profession all started in the ’60s with the mantra, “I’m OK, you’re OK.” It was the anti-authoritarian demand to be labeled normal just because a person believed he was normal. The “I’m OK, you’re OK” trend was an outgrowth of the demons inherent in democracy—that ugly leveling effect of the democratic spirit. We now dare any person outside of ourselves to make value judgments of any kind about our chosen identity. “Who is someone else— especially an authority figure—to tell me that my wish to be the opposite sex is not beautiful and good, simply because I say it is?”

As a result, most psychologists have turned the henhouse over to the foxes. The profession has become an empty shell of shallow behavioral studies without attempt at insight. There are endless, grievance-based studies that demand the affirmation of alternative lifestyles. The latest (coming from gay psychologists) is the push for social affirmation of “consensual non-monogamy.” They want psychologists to remove the stigma from promiscuity.

Besides debasing social norms and shaming psychologists of traditional values, the profession is giving up on the search to grasp the totality of our human nature. What a loss!

For those who still seek the truth, I’d say, “Keep the flame burning.”

Christopher H. Rosik is a licensed California psychologist who works at the Link Care Center in Fresno, California. He is also a clinical faculty member at Fresno Pacific University.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

Homosexual behavior is an attempt to “repair” the wound that left the boy alienated from his own innate masculinity.

See article here:

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2016/traumatic-foundation-male-homosexuality

Client Choice Under Attack:

Interview with David Pickup, LMFT

by Linda Ames Nicolosi

1.  David, you have testified before several State Legislatures about the proposed therapy bans.  These laws seek to stop any psychotherapy that might reduce same-sex attractions in minors. What’s your thinking on this?

These bans are, in effect, child abuse.

All of our therapy clients believe that their homosexual feelings were caused by emotional and/or sexual abuse. To address this abuse, I use a program called Reintegrative Therapy, which focuses on childhood traumas. As a byproduct of this therapy, when the trauma is revisited, homosexual feelings are often reduced or eliminated.  To deny a child their right to heal these underlying wounds would do nothing but further abuse the child.

Can you imagine a child or his parent walking into our offices who wants therapy for homosexual feelings that are associated with their sexual abuse, and having to tell them that overcoming this trauma might change their sexual attractions— and that any change of homosexual feelings would be illegal? This is nothing short of more abuse.

2. If Joe Nicolosi Sr. were alive today, what would be his thoughts on this situation?

If Joe were here, he would be fighting right alongside the rest of us with his characteristic expressions of scientific integrity, passionate belief in what truly works therapeutically, and expressions of healthy, sarcastic wit.  He wouldn’t put up with psychological nonsense.

3.  Could you tell us about Sam Brinton, who has been paid by gay-activist groups to go around the country testifying in favor of these anti-therapy bills?

Brinton has given false testimony of the supposed Reparative Therapy he received some years ago as a minor. His parents, who would have been the ones who sent him to therapy, refute his story.  Brinton says he was harmed by this therapy but he refuses to state, or “can’t remember,” any of the key details—at what age he went to therapy, the name of the counselor, whether it was a religious or licensed counselor (his story has changed over the years), or the location of his experience.

He now believes he has achieved the “freedom” to be who he really is. [Editor’s note: Brinton, who says he is non-binary, was subsequently charged with three occasions of luggage theft of women’s clothes from airport carousels, and then was fired from his U.S. government job managing nuclear waste.] Brinton is someone who engages in degrading animal-fantasy sex, bizarre cross-dressing, sado-masochistic bondage sex, and even the abuse of women in some ways.

And our lawmakers fell, over and over, for Brinton’s story.  No lawmaker attempted to verify his claims, even though we told them they were easily shown to be false. Based on this man’s testimony, state lawmakers voted over and over to ban change-allowing therapy for minors.

4. Why are these therapy bans so dangerous?

A client’s right to therapy that benefits him or her should be upheld by all the major psychological institutions in the world. Instead, it is under siege.

Besides, there is a legal issue at stake—the US Constitutional right to free speech. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently gave the opinion (coming out of another case regarding free speech) that banning specific types of therapy was a violation of free speech.  In contrast, the 9th Circuit court ruled differently some years ago. As this issue continues to work its way through the legal system, we expect other Federal Courts and the Supreme Court to rule in our favor.

5. How do these bans threaten clients’ rights?

To ban therapy because it doesn’t fit a contemporary political or psychological movement will interfere with client dignity and self-determination. The first ethical goal of all medical or mental health professions is, after all, to do no harm, and these bans will harm clients’ rights to self-determination.

Clients’ rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation will no doubt increase, if such therapy is banned throughout the country. The anti-therapy movement will also lead to the breakdown of scientific authority of the mental health profession and public respect for its research, as the layman begins to recognize that politics, not science, is actually driving their agendas.

6. The LGBT movement is demanding that transgender therapy be available to a preschool child.  That child is seen as perfectly capable of making his own decisions about who he is, if he seeks to identify as the opposite sex. And yet a teenager with homosexual feelings is seen as not capable of choosing his own identity if it leads him away from a gay lifestyle. Isn’t this intellectually incoherent?

You have just articulated the exact and gross irony of this situation. This incoherence makes it obvious that  the LGBT movement to ban therapy is political, self-serving,  and not really directed toward the mental health of children. Children are being used for the irrational and biased agendas of adults. They seek to upend our understanding of gender and sexuality and guide it toward a worldview which ignores our biological design. This has happened in history many times before.

7. Why is it so important to the gay community to stop people from leaving homosexuality?

There are two main reasons for the gay community’s resistance. First, testimony such as my own tends to crack the foundation of the LGBT world view, which would require them to face the traumatic underlying causes of the homosexual condition.

Second, people with same-sex attraction usually hold onto unresolved anger from having been shamed or bullied by family, friends and society from many years past.   It would be emotionally unsettling if they weren’t able to transfer these unresolved anger issues onto other people in the present. In short, they need to “pay back” the hurt that was done to them.

This maltreatment for having had homosexual feelings is actually why I have so much compassion for the LGBT community. They deserve our compassion, but that doesn’t mean that clients’ rights should be taken away.

8. What other false testimonies have you seen in government deliberations over the therapy bans?

I testified in Denver in March 2019 where two of the most notorious LGBT activists spread their falsehoods in the senate committee.  Yet despite my efforts, that committee passed the therapy ban!

One notorious figure is, as mentioned above, Sam Brinton.  The other is Matthew Shurka. I’ve testified in around 20 states over seven years.  It’s always the same stories from the gay activists. Every one of these testimonies reports horrendous things like electroshock to testicles, shame-based therapies, and coercive techniques.  But these activists never report “who, what, where and when” these alleged acts were committed against them. And the committee members never ask them for corroboration.

If these terrible therapies had actually taken place, don’t you think those men would have sued their therapists? Wouldn’t they have reported them to their licensing boards? Yet none of them have done so.

On the other hand, our own testimonies of the existence of safe and effective therapy can establish actual dates, doctors’ names, and places where clients received effective, professional treatment.

9. Where do you think this is all going to lead?

If the Supreme Court still exists as an honorable, wise and unbiased institution, I believe that it will uphold a client’s right to professional therapy.

But if they do not, the U.S. could be hit by a metaphorical iceberg like the Titanic that sunk long ago. It will be an age of something like fascism.

On the other hand, if our rights are upheld in the courts, I believe a new era of professional therapy will emerge  in our country that informs everyone that no one has to be LGBT.

10. The Democrats have been unified in favor of the anti-therapy bills.  In fact, didn’t Hillary Clinton say she hoped to ban therapy for adults as well? 

Yes, Clinton indeed pushed for the therapy bans, even for adults. But in many states there is immense pushback from truth-seeking Republicans. However, in almost every one of the 15 states that have banned therapy, they’ve only succeeded because they are the most liberal states in the Union. From this point forward, it’s going to be very hard for LGBT activists to take hold in many more states to ban therapy.

11. Do you think the legislators you speak to, are actually interested in the truth?

Yes, the conservative ones are, for the most part, but the liberal ones probably couldn’t care less. In my opinion, there is a national dumbing-down of reason, and a blindness to truth.

The Left tries desperately to convey compassion for all diverse peoples. However, compassion without truth degenerates into mindless sentimentality. In fact, compassion just becomes “sentimental niceness” whenever it is not grounded in the truth.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

During the course of therapy with same-sex attracted men, when the client is working on increasing his attraction to women, we sometimes encounter a block to the development of heterosexual intimacy which traces back to the boy’s childhood experience with an intrusive and over-intimate mother. The following are some examples.

A client and I were doing Body Work on an attractive female image. As he gazed at the photo, he felt himself slowly developing warm, close feelings. But just as he was beginning to enjoy the pleasant sensations in his body, he hit a sudden block. He felt a rigidity in his chest (i.e., fear). When we analyzed the problem, a jolting memory came up of his mother “playfully treating me like baby” by taking her breast out and putting it to his mouth.  He was 10 years old—a preteen at the time—and the incident, which was supposed to be a joke, had brought up alarming, incestuous feelings at that time which he had felt an anxious need to suppress. In fact, he had “forgotten” those feelings until this moment.

Another mother who was a midwife in a small town, was called to help with a birth, and she took her 7-year-old son (now my adult client) along with her. The mother allowed her son to watch the delivery, and to this day, my client recalls the vivid image of the pregnant woman’s bloody vaginal area and of her terrified screaming. This early, and (to him) horrifying experience of a woman’s body created an association that he was unable to erase. From that time forward, he felt a sense of revulsion regarding the female body.

Another client told me of an incident when he was about 13. He was talking to his mother about his anxieties regarding having a girlfriend, and his inexperience about what to do or say.  The mother suggested that the two of them— mother and son—practice kissing together. This client did not need to read Freud to see the connection between that incident and his feelings of apprehension toward women. His mother’s total disregard for normal mother-son boundaries had formed a barrier which prevented the client from developing normal heterosexual feelings. By default, he turned to the “safety” of homosexuality.

Many clients tell me that they and their mothers showered together.  The mothers thought such an experience would make their sons feel relaxed about the human body, but instead, they produced the opposite effect. Other clients remember disturbing memories of their mothers walking around the house naked, an image which left them with defensive feelings of abhorrence.  Some mothers also insisted on frequent cuddling and hugging, even as their sons got older.

In such situations, the feminine body becomes not a mysterious attraction, as it does for heterosexual men,  but rather it becomes an object of dread. For the man who develops homosexually, the male body, in contrast, has no negative childhood associations of boundary violations and therefore, it represents a “safe haven” from the intrusive feminine.

Mothers who are flirtatious with their sons in an erotic manner are seeking to meet their own needs, to the neglect of their sons’. Their motivations could range from mere careless naiveté, to desire for narcissistic gratification, thus turning the son into a sort of plaything and failing to acknowledge his masculine dignity.

Mothers must always be sensitive to the healthy physical and emotional boundaries that are required by the young boy to develop heterosexually. To the male, the feminine must always be mysterious and “other than me,” rather than intrusive, controlling, over-familiar, and suggestive of the threat of incestuous attraction, as so many of our homosexual clients report from their childhoods.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

The primary focus of reparative therapy for men is always on the healing of same-sex relationships. A reparative therapist strongly encourages the establishment of healthy, non-erotic friendships with men.

There comes a time, however, when some clients evolve to a point of readiness to enter an intimate relationship with a woman. This readiness must be expressed by the client himself, and cannot be encouraged by the therapist in the same way we would urge a client to seek out male friendships.

Any success with women will not endure without the continuation of the client’s ongoing, satisfying male relationships.

To understand the particular challenges of the homosexually oriented man in his relationship to women, we must first begin by understanding the classic triadic relationship which is seen so predictably in the history of our clients. This triadic relationship throws the boy on the side of the mother, with father isolated from his wife and son. This misalignment gives the boy a distorted perspective of himself in relationship to the masculine and the feminine. The boy’s father remains a mystery, and his mother is all too well known.

In life, men and women are always challenged to try to understand each other. Straight men are often accused of failing to meet this challenge, and it is said that they are typically insensitive to women. Paradoxically, however, it is the same insensitivity which allows the heterosexual man to develop an intimate relationship with the woman. He is not so attuned to females that he overreacts and loses himself in response to their needs.

To the straight man, women are mysteries, but this is the price the straight man must pay for the development of his heterosexuality.

If the straight man can be faulted for insensitivity, the homosexual man can be faulted for being too sensitive to women and emotionally over-involved with them. Said one homosexual client as he reviewed his failed female relationships, “I have learned to be too open to women in an unhealthy way.” Growing up, he had been too intensely tied in to his mother’s emotions.

Mothers want a compliant, well-behaved, good little boy. The prehomosexual boy offers this appealing image of the good boy to please his mother–behind which, however, he hides his true self in self-protection. He becomes the good little boy on the outside, but on the inside, he remains intensely confused about his needs and his identity.

As the client approaches the challenge of an intimate adult relationship with a woman, this drama of the early relationship with the mother will be re-enacted.

The Challenge

For the man with a homosexual background, the challenge is to enter into a relationship with a woman while maintaining a sense of self-possession. The job of the therapist is to monitor the client’s internal sense of self as he approaches the woman. The therapist keeps the client honest with himself and prevents him from falling into the false self, which he will easily do as he did in relationship with mother. While there may be numerous versions, the typical false selves that emerge in a relationship with a woman are:

1. The passive-compliant.
2. The theatrical entertainer.
3. The empathic counselor.

The therapist is watching for the client’s tendency to abandon himself and slip into one of those false selves when he is with her. By becoming too sensitive to the woman’s expectations for him, he abandons all of his needs and wants and desires for her needs, thus losing his self-reference.

Trust

The successful shift to heterosexual marriage is all about trust:

“Can I trust this woman with my feelings? Will she manipulate and confuse me? Will she fail to see me for who I am, and smother me with her expectations? Will she act like she cares for me but really use me or try to control me? Will I be able to be myself?“

The role of the therapist is to listen for the man’s compromises of selfhood.

The Ongoing Need for Male Friendships

No matter how successful his relationship with his wife, the man with the homosexual background will always need to have good male friendships. Many wives–even those wives who did not know that their husbands had a homosexual problem–have told me that when their husbands spend time with their male friends, they are happier and more attentive at home, and more emotionally available to them and the children. When their husbands shrink from men and fail to maintain male friendships, they become withdrawn, moody and emotionally unavailable to them and the children.

The married man with a homosexual background may find conjugal relations with his wife to be less intense. However, he is left with a sense of rightness, contentment and well-being. Rather than feeling left depleted by sex (as he felt with men) he is renewed and feels satisfied and good about himself, as he experiences himself to be more fully a participant in the gendered world.

Some Thoughts on the Boy Scouts

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

The problem is not about admitting homosexual boys; it’s about the transmission of an Ideology. 

Should homosexually oriented boys be admitted into the Boy Scouts?  ”Yes,” I’ve often said, because boys with same-sex attractions could benefit greatly from male bonding experiences.

Then what is the source of the conflict?

Youth groups provide an important rite of passage for boys growing into manhood.  In fact, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) never did exclude same-sex attracted members—  their policy was “don’t ask, don’t tell,” like the policy once held by the military.

That worked well until gay activists insisted that boys should enter the Scouts with a “gay is who I am” mentality.

Gay activists successfully played it to the press that the BSA was discriminating against homosexual boys—  that they didn’t want them.

But the BSA should have fought for what they really stood for: that all boys are welcome, but that the BSA will continue to promote the Judeo-Christian understanding of human identity and biological design.

People with a worldview rooted in traditional faith see homosexuality as a superficial layer of personal identity. Same-sex orientation is seen by them as evidence of trauma..as a problematic attraction…as a chosen identity that is disconnected from biological reality. A person’s truest and deepest identity is ultimately heterosexual, which will put him in harmony with his design. This is the worldview shared by traditional Christians, traditional Jews, Muslims, and Ba’hai, among other faiths.  Their worldview cannot simply be discounted as “prejudice” rooted in “animus.”

But gay activists believe that a gay identity must be accepted by everyone as that particular person’s nature.  Yet people of traditional faith are confident that on a deeper, truer level, these boys were created for something greater.

That’s not an easy concept to argue, in an age where every individual is said to be free to choose his own identity—  male, female, non-binary gender, “questioning,” bisexual, gay or straight. In today’s world, it seems like a slap in the face to tell someone, ‘This can’t be who you really are.’”

The Problem of Gay Scout Leaders

What’s going to happen with the new Scout policy of accepting gay-identified Scout leaders?  What will you say when you see a gay leader encouraging the boys to “discover who they are” with the idea that they, too may be gay?” Because this will inevitably happen.

One could argue that the Boy Scouts are a-sexual.  They don’t talk about sex.  They’re not allowed to.

But this issue is not about sex— it’s about the transmission of an ideology.  When gay activists get into positions of Scout leadership, they will, naturally, want to serve as role models. They will be on a mission to insist that homosexuality is the same as heterosexuality.  They’ll talk about their belief that children don’t need two married biological parents.  They’ll introduce the boys to their partner or ‘husband.’ They will present their lives as examples, and themselves as role models.

That approach will teach not just that this particular, individual Scout leader has qualities to emulate (which no doubt is true; the gay Scout leader may have many good character qualities), but it mixes up the example of his personal character with his homosexuality, and sends the message that homosexuality itself is good.

People have caved in on this issue; in our schools, our youth organizations, the media, movies, government— the psychological and medical professions…everywhere; the accepted view is that the traditional understanding of human identity is “hatred.” Almost no one is left to speak the truth about human design and purpose.

For people of traditional faith, new Scouting alternatives are being created. One good alternative to look into is Trail Life USA.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

This is the paradox of Reparative Therapy®: it is successful only if the client first faces and accepts his unwanted feelings.

The more the person sees the thing inside himself that he rejects, and sees it in the light of truth, the more it dissipates. The task is not to look away from the feelings, but to look through them.

When we use the “Triangle of Containment” in therapy, the client is asked to focus directly on a homosexual thought or fantasy. At the same time, he should actively attend to his bodily sensations. While doing this, he is asked to stay connected to the therapist. When the client is holding on to the homoerotic image, he will usually experience a simultaneous bodily arousal. (Some men describe it as a genital surge, a rush or a “zap.”) If he can accept his bodily homoerotic experience while staying connected to the therapist, the sexual feeling soon transforms into something else: the recognition of deeper, pain-generated emotional needs which have nothing to do with sexuality.

Re-experiencing the feelings in the presence of an accepting therapist helps remove that shame; the client is then better able to see his same-sex desire for what it is. One man described his liberation from shame by looking deeper the homoerotic illusion. “Looking at it in the light of day,” he said, “takes the ‘leprosy’ out of it.”

When we push the shame aside–facing the feared fantasies directly–we see the true nature of the man’s homoerotic attraction, which is about attachment loss. When the man looks past that erotically charged male symbol -the icon of a missing part of his identity—he can begin to fulfill the same-sex attachment needs that are truly at the core of his deepest longings.