by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

It is widely agreed that many factors likely contribute to the formation of male homosexuality. One factor may be the predisposing biological influence of temperament (Byne and Parsons, l993). No scientific evidence, however, shows homosexuality to be directly inherited in the sense that eye color is inherited (Satinover, 1996).

Recent political pressure has resulted in a denial of the importance of the factor most strongly implicated by decades of previous clinical research–developmental factors, particularly the influence of parents. A review of the literature on male homosexuality reveals extensive reference to the prehomosexual boy’s relational problems with both parents (West 1959, Socarides 1978, Evans 1969); among some researchers, the father-son relationship has been particularly implicated (Bieber et al 1962, Moberly 1983).

One psychoanalytic hypothesis for the connection between poor early father-son relationship and homosexuality is that during the critical gender-identity phase of development, the boy perceives the father as rejecting. As a result, he grows up failing to fully identify with his father and the masculinity he represents.

Nonmasculine or feminine behavior in boyhood has been repeatedly shown to be correlated with later homosexuality (Green, l987, Zuger, l988); taken together with related factors–particularly the often-reported alienation from same-sex peers and poor relationship with father–this suggests a failure to fully gender-identify. In its more extreme form, this same syndrome (usually resulting in homosexuality) is diagnosed as Childhood Gender-Identity Deficit (Zucker and Bradley, 1996).

One likely cause for “failure to identify” is a narcissistic injury inflicted by the father onto the son (who is usually temperamentally sensitive) during the preoedipal stage of the boy’s development. This hurt appears to have been inflicted during the critical gender-identity phase when the boy must undertake the task of assuming a masculine identification. The hurt manifests itself as a defensive detachment from masculinity in the self, and in others. As an adult, the homosexual is often characterized by this complex which takes the form of “the hurt little boy” (Nicolosi, 1991).

During the course of my treatment of ego-dystonic male homosexuals, I have sometimes requested that fathers participate in their sons’ treatment. Thus I have been able to familiarize myself with some of the fathers’ most common personality traits. This discussion attempts to identify some clinical features common to those fathers of homosexuals.

For this report, I have focused on sixteen fathers who I consider typical in my practice–twelve fathers of homosexual sons (mid-teens to early 30’s), and four fathers of young, gender-disturbed, evidently prehomosexual boys (4- to 7- year-olds). The vast majority of these fathers appeared to be psychologically normal and, also like most fathers, well-intentioned with regard to their sons; in only one case was the father seriously disturbed, inflicting significant emotional cruelty upon his son.

However as a group, these fathers were characterized by the inability to counter their sons’ defensive detachment from them. They felt helpless to attract the boy into their own masculine sphere.

Clinical Impressions

As a whole, these fathers could be characterized as emotionally avoidant. Exploration of their histories revealed that they had typically had poor relationships with their own fathers. They tended to defer to their wives in emotional matters and appeared particularly dependent on them to be their guides, interpreters and spokespersons.

While these men expressed sincere hope that their sons would transition to heterosexuality, nevertheless they proved incapable of living up to a long-term commitment to help them toward that goal. In his first conjoint session, one father cried openly as his 15-year-old son expressed his deep disappointment with him; yet for months afterward, he would drive his son to his appointment without saying a word to him in the car.

Further, while they often appeared to be gregarious and popular, these fathers tended not to have significant male friendships. The extent to which they lacked the ability for male emotional encounter was too consistent and pronounced to be dismissed as simply “typical of the American male.” Rather, my clinical impression of these fathers as a group was that there existed some significant limitation in their ability to engage emotionally with males.

From their sons’ earliest years, these fathers showed a considerable variation in their ability to recognize and respond to the boys’ emotional withdrawal from them. Some naively reported their perception of having had a “great” relationship with their sons, while their sons themselves described the relationship as having been “terrible.” Approximately half the fathers, however, sadly admitted that the relationship was always poor and, in retrospect, perceived their sons as rejecting them from early childhood. Why their sons rejected them remained for most fathers a mystery, and they could only express a helpless sense of resignation and confusion. When pushed, these men would go further to express hurt and deep sadness. Ironically, these sentiments–helplessness, hurt and confusion–seemed to be mutual; they are the same expressed by my clients in describing their own feelings in the relationship with their fathers.

The trait common to fathers of homosexuals seemed to be an incapacity to summon the ability to correct relational problems with their sons. All the men reported feeling “stuck” and helpless in the face of their sons’ indifference or explicit rejection of them. Rather than actively extending themselves, they seemed characteristically inclined to retreat, avoid and feel hurt. Preoccupied with self-protection and unwilling to risk the vulnerability required to give to their sons, they were unable to close the emotional breach. Some showed narcissistic personality features. Some fathers were severe and capable of harsh criticism; some were brittle and rigid; overall, most were soft, weak and placid, with a characteristic emotional inadequacy. The term that comes to mind is the classic psycholanalytic term “acquiescent” – the acquiescent father.

Homosexuality is almost certainly due to multiple factors and cannot be reduced soley to a faulty father-son relationship. Fathers of homosexual sons are usually also fathers of heterosexual sons–so the personality of the father is clearly not the sole cause of homosexuality. Other factors I have seen in the development of homosexuality include a hostile, feared older brother; a mother who is a very warm and attractive personality and proves more appealing to the boy than an emotionally removed father; a mother who is actively disdainful of masculinity; childhood seduction by another male; peer labelling of the boy due to poor athletic ability or timidity; in recent years, cultural factors encouraging a confused and uncertain youngster into an embracing gay community; and in the boy himself, a particularly sensitive, relatively fragile, often passive disposition.

At the same time, we cannot ignore the striking commonality of these fathers’ personalities.

In two cases, the fathers were very involved and deeply committed to the treatment of their sons, but conceded that they were not emotionally present during their sons’ early years. In both cases it was not personality, but circumstance that caused the fathers’ emotional distance. In one case the father was a surgeon from New Jersey who reported atteding medical school while trying to provide financial support for his young family of three children. The second father, an auto mechanic from Arizona, reported that when he was only 21 years old, he was forced to marry the boy’s mother because she was pregnant. He admitted never loving the boy’s mother, having been physically absent from the home, and essentially having abandoned both mother and boy. Both fathers, now more mature and committed to re-establishing contact with their sons, participated enthusiastically in their therapy. But in both cases, the sons had, by then, become resistant to establishing an emotional connection with their fathers.

Attempt at Therapeutic Dialogue

My overall impression of fathers in conjoint sessions was of a sense of helplessness, discomfort and awkwardness when required to directly interact with their sons.

These men tended not to trust psychological concepts and communication techniques and often seemed confused and easily overwhelmed with the challenge to dialogue in depth. Instructions which I offered during consultation, when followed, were followed literally, mechanically and without spontaneity. A mutual antipathy, a stubborn resistance and a deep grievance on the part of both fathers and sons was clearly observable. At times I felt myself placed in the position of “mother interpreter,” a role encouraged by fathers and at times by sons. As “mother interpreter,” I found myself inferring feeling and intent from the father’s fragmented phrases and conveying that fuller meaning to the son, and vice versa from son to father.

Some fathers expressed concern with “saying the wrong thing,” while others seemed paralyzed by fear. During dialogue, fathers demonstrated great difficulty in getting past their own self-consciousness and their own reactions to what their sons were saying. This limited their empathetic attunement to the therapeutic situation, and to their sons’ position and feelings.

As their sons spoke to them, these fathers seemed blocked and unable to respond. Often they could only respond by saying that they were “too confused,” “too hurt,” or “too frustrated” to dialogue. One father said he was “too angry” to attend the sessions of his teenage son–a message conveyed to me by the mother. At the slightest sign of improvement in the father-son relationship, a few fathers seemed too ready to flee, concluding “Everything is okay – can I go now?”

Treatment Interventions

Before conjoint father-son sessions begin, the client should be helped to gain a clear sense of what he wants from his father. To simply expose the father to a list of complaints is of no value. He should also decide on a clear, constructive way to ask for this. Such preparation shifts the son from a position of helpless complaining, to staying centered on his genuine needs and the effective expression of them.

The Deadly Dilemma

Eventually, within the course of conjoint sessions a particular point will be reached which I call “the deadly dilemma.” This deadlock in dialogue–which seems to duplicate the earliest father-son rupture–occurs in two phases as follows:

Phase 1: With the therapist’s assistance, the son expresses his needs and wants to his father. Hearing his son, the father becomes emotionally affected, so much so that he cannot respond to his son’s disclosure. He is overwhelmed by his own reactions, becoming so “angered,” “hurt,” “upset,” or “confused” that he cannot attend to his son’s needs. Blocked by his own internal reactions, he is unable to give what his son asks of him.

Phase 2: In turn, the son is unable to tolerate his father’s insular emotional reaction in place of the affirmative response he seeks from him. To accept his father’s non-responses, the son feels he must abandon the needs he has expressed. The only recourse for the son is to retreat again to the defensive distancing which is already at the core of the father-son relationship. The son cannot empathize with the father’s non-responsiveness because to do so is painfully reminiscent of childhood patterns that are associated with his own deep hurt and anger: namely the imperative, “My father’s needs must always come before mine.” The son’s hurt and anger is in reaction to what appears to him to be “just more lame excuses” for Dad’s inability to give the attention, affection or approval he has so long desired from him. Indeed, to the son this seems like Dad’s old ploy, with all the associated historical pain.

This deadly dilemma originated, I believe, during the preverbal level of infancy. As one father’s recollections confirmed, “My son would never look at me. I would hold his face with my hands and force him to look at me, but he would always avert his eyes.” Other men have described an “unnatural indifference” to their fathers during their growing-up years.

During the course of therapy with these fathers, I began to see the deep hurt in them–a hurt that came from their sons’ indifference to their attempts (however meager) to improve the relationship.

Reflecting on his now-elderly father, one client sadly recalled:

“I feel sorry for my father. He always had a certain insensitivity, an emotional incompetence. Many of the interactions at home simply went over his head. He was dense, inadequate. I feel a pity for him.”

These fathers appeared unwilling or unable to be open and vulnerable to their sons; unable to reach out, to hear their sons’ pain and anger with respect to them, and unable to respond honestly. Their emotional availability was blocked and they were unable to turn the relational problem around. Rather they remained removed, seemingly dispassionate and helpless.

In conjoint sessions, none of the fathers were capable of taking the lead in dialogue. When dialogue became stagnant, they were unable to initiate communication. I believe the consistent inability of these fathers to get past their own blocks and reach out to their sons played a significant role in these boys’ inability to move forward into full, normal masculine identification and heterosexuality.

Bibliography

Bieber, I. et al (1962) Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals. New York: Basic Books.

Byne, W. and Parsons, B., “Human sexual orientation: the biologic theories reappraised,” Archives of General Psychiatry, vol. 50:228-239, March l993.

Evans, R. (1969). Childhood parental relationships of homosexual men. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 33:129-135.

Green, Richard (l987) “The Sissy Boy Syndrome” and the Development of Homosexuality. New Haven, Ct.: Yale U. Press.

Moberly, Elizabeth (1983) Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic. Greenwood, S.C.: Attic Press.

Nicolosi, Joseph (l991) Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality; A New Clinical Approach. Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1991.

Satinover, J. (1996). Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

Socarides, Charles (1978). Homosexuality. New York: Jason Aronson.

West, D.J. (1959). Parental figures in the genesis of male homosexuality. International Journal of Social Psychiatry 5:85-97.

Zucker, K. and Bradley, S. (1995) Gender Identity Disorder and Psychosexual Problems in Children and Adolescents. N.Y.: The Guilford Press.

Zuger, Bernard (l988) Is Early Effeminate Behavior in Boys Early Homosexuality? Comprehensive Psychiatry, vol. 29, no. 5 (September/October) p. 509-519.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

Perhaps of greatest concern, unfinished grieving results in a lifestyle of emotional self-protection.

Grief Work is an important part of the psychotherapy process for a considerable number of clients. Such men will benefit from revisiting–from time to time–the painful, despairing place within them.

Most of the clients I see* have experienced a core gender-identity injury. Whenever a person has experienced an injury to the core self, re-experiencing the injury is so deeply unsettling that it feels like a sort of death; it is emotionally agonizing and even physically searing.

In the earliest phase of Grief Work, the client is often surprised by the extent and depth of his buried pain. It is not unusual to hear him say something like, “I can’t believe there is so much sadness in me!” The sadness may spill over into his daily life; it is very common for him to report spontaneous crying during the week “for no reason.” Yet the benefits of revisiting the pain are powerful. One man explained:

“Grief work is allowing me to generate my true deep sadness–feeling hurt and abandoned–all the loneliness that I wasn’t able to explore as a child. I was often very sad; I felt alone in the midst of a large family, and believed that I had no right to express my true feelings of being sad when I was hurt.

In the grief work, I’m able to re-live that pain and experience it in a safe environment rather than bury it and deny it and fear it. I’m gradually working this through now in a healthy way. I know now that we’re meant to feel the pain, not to bury it. And when I feel the pain, then my need to use the homosexuality to cover it up is so much less.”

Working Through the Abandonment-Annihilation Trauma

Essential to Reparative Therapy’s goal of resolving gender deficit is the working-through of the Annihilation-Abandonment trauma that has created this core injury. The injury may have begun with an insecure attachment to the mother. This injury is profoundly felt, yet again, when the boy’s gestures toward fulfilling his masculine ambition are not supported by the father. When peer rejection follows, this wound deepens.

Any time a vital attachment bond fails to develop, the person must address the shame of not having felt authentically known and validated. When he becomes an adult, he must acknowledge and grieve this loss. Grief resolution allows him to release these body-held memories, and in the process, to mourn the loss.

Learning to Live in Emotional Authenticity

The literature on the psychology of bereavement reveals the pathological legacy of unfinished grieving in any person’s life: particularly, an ongoing fear of emotional closeness, and a constrained capacity for genuine intimacy. This defensive avoidance of authentic emotions, which serves to protect against the core narcissistic hurt, is seen in the Shame Posture (formerly called Defensive Detachment), which we so characteristically observe in the men who come to us with same-sex attractions (SSA).

Attachment Loss Threatens Survival

Attachment researchers, most notably John Bowlby, explain the infantile attachment process as rooted in a primal drive which, when thwarted, leaves as its legacy a sense of loss that is almost equivalent to physical death. Human attachment needs are rooted in the drive for basic survival. Therefore the man who has suffered an attachment loss will re-experience it as something like falling into a bottomless abyss–actually dying.

Understandably, the therapist will encounter significant resistance against approaching this unresolved loss. Seeing his client struggle through this death-like experience may bring up his own discomfort with grief, and perhaps require that he face his own unresolved losses. Further, he must be willing to return with some clients again and again–as necessary–to this same place of profound discomfort. Consequently, Grief Work should never be entered into until there is sufficient positive transference to counter the entrenched defenses.

Yet when we pursue this painful work in Reparative Therapy®, we see profound, durable treatment gains. The more the client is able to penetrate and resolve his attachment loss, the less he feels driven toward homosexual behavior as a form of reparation. The process proceeds as follows:

Task #1: To accept the reality of the loss– to come face-to-face with it.

Task #2: To acknowledge its meaning, to confront its significance, to feel the emotional impact of the loss with the support of an empathic “significant other” (in this case, an attuned therapist).

Task #3: To admit to oneself its irreversibility, and to accept the reality that there is no going back and undoing the experience.

Pathological Grief Defined

The term Grief Work was first coined by Freud. From his earliest writings, Freud understood this process to involve helping the client abandon his defenses in order to face a deep loss. He said Grief Work must involve “de-cathecting the libido” from the mental representation of the lost attachment, and when this was successfully accomplished, libido would then be reclaimed through re-cathexis into subsequent healthy attachments.

Freud noted that success can be blocked, however, by the continuance of conflicting feelings toward the loved one; i.e. when unresolved anger remains, which is then turned back against the self.

Freud’s earliest formulations regarding grief remain central to our work, in that we understand homosexuality and its associated symptoms to commonly represent a defense against attachment losses incurred in childhood, often within the Triadic-Narcissistic family.

Grief is a natural human state which should have not only have a beginning, but also an end. Yet there is much personal variability in this emotional process; no two people grieve in the same way. Some people remain trapped in an intense and prolonged reaction against the loss of an emotionally important figure. Others, however, feel little need to repeatedly reenter the loss.

But until the grief is resolved, all emotional roads will lead the man back to the original Annihilation-Abandonment trauma. Perhaps of greatest concern, unfinished grieving results in a lifestyle of narcissistic self-protection.

Healthy grieving is a fully felt and conscious experience that does not involve prolonged suffering. Pathological grief, however, is marked by self-defeating, self-destructive, maladaptive behaviors.

Not surprisingly, the person with a homosexual problem shares traits characteristic of persons stuck in pathological grief: excessive dependency upon others for self-esteem, subclinical depression, maladaptive behaviors, suicidal ideation, emotional instability, as well as difficulty with long-term intimate relationships.

We have observed all of those symptoms to exist at a high rate of frequency among our homosexually oriented clients. In fact, a much higher-than-average rate of psychiatric disorders has been shown, in recent studies, to exist among homosexual men as a group–not just within clinical populations, and not just in cultures that are hostile to gay relationships, but in gay-tolerant societies.(1)

In fact, the extent of the maladaptive behaviors of gay men is so broad that it argues persuasively for the existence of an early, profound injury.

When unresolved grief is a ground-source of same-sex desires, we can understand why we would observe so many self-defeating, maladaptive behaviors. Homoeroticism masks the anguish of this profound loss and serves as a temporary, if ultimately unsatisfying, distraction from the tragedy of a core attachment injury.

The Triadic-Narcissistic Family and Traumatic Loss

Gender is intrinsic to the structure of self in the same way that support beams are intrinsic to a building.

As we have seen, within the Triadic-Narcissistic family structure, the boy’s attempts at individualization and gender actualization are not adequately supported within the family. The results can be disastrous for the temperamentally sensitive boy, whose peers will be quick to reinforce the implicit message that he is somehow defective.

The pre-homosexual boy experiences this attachment rupture differently with each parent: He commonly reports that he felt ignored/ criticized by his father, and manipulated/ emotionally over-engaged by his mother. Both parents may indeed have loved the child within the limitations of their own personalities. However, their interactions communicated to the sensitive child, on some level, that who he really was, was somehow not acceptable.

When an attachment loss is experienced, the child can neither share his distress, nor even accurately conceptualize the nature of his loss. Yet his unmet needs persist, and the loss stay stored within his body memory.

The developmental sequence is therefore –

(1) core attachment loss;

(2) resulting gender-identity deficit;

(3) compensation through homoerotic reparation.

Homosexual acting-out, for such men, is a narcissistic defense against truly mourning the loss of an authentic attachment to one or both parents. (One might say it is ironic that “gay” is the word used to describe a defense against profound sadness.) The homosexual condition can, for these men, be understood as a symptom of chronic and pathological grief.

Whenever we as therapists return the client to his unfinished bereavement, he will be increasingly freed from the grief and shame that have been paralyzing his assertion and propelling him into a life constrained within the False Self.

* Perhaps 80% of the clients who come to the Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic (Encino, CA) fit the model described (suggestive of a core gender-identity deficit); about 20% of cases we see have different histories.

Reference

(1) See, for example, Sandfort, T., R. Graaf, R. Bijl, P. Schnabel (2001) “Same-Sex Sexual Behavior and Psychiatric Disorders: Findings from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study (NEMESIS),” Archives of General Psychiatry 58: 85-91.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

Several media stories recently have promoted the message that no one ever transitions out of same-sex attractions (SSA). As proof, reporters cite the words of prominent ex-gay ministry leaders. These leaders–who consider themselves profoundly changed–nevertheless admit to the media that they sometimes struggle, even today, with unwanted temptation.

People who oppose our message–particularly, many reporters–seized upon the ministry leaders’ message, which was subtle, ambiguous and requiring nuanced consideration, and reduced it to a more attractive (to them) idea that was “short and dumb” but missed the truth of the matter.

As the truism goes, “For every complex question there is one simple answer–and it is usually wrong.” “See?” the media stories seemed to say. “No one ever changes.”

Here, instead, is the nuanced message.

The early Christian ex-gay movement portrayed the overcoming of homosexuality in absolute terms–offering a nice, clean picture of complete transition: With sufficient prayer, faith, and support, a person was said to have overcome SSA once and for all. Once a person repented, if his faith was sufficient, he would enjoy full restoration to heterosexuality.

The result of that overly optimistic view was an angry backlash by another, newly emerging celebrity–the man who once thought he was ex-gay, but now says he is happily gay once again–and wishes he had never tried to change. These “EX-EX-gays” have gone to the media with a story that is very appealing to many ears–the message of absolute sexual liberation.

It was out of concern about this angry backlash that ex-gay ministries have now become very cautious in delivering their message of hope. But they seem to be telling the struggler that he must be prepared to face unending trials. This is not an appealing message to the confused young man who is trying to decide whether to go ahead and tackle the change process, or “just give it up and be gay.”

This bleak message also appears to support the pro-gay claim that homosexuality is fixed and intrinsic for some people. It gives “comfort to the enemy” and to his insistence that although behavioral change may be possible, beneath it all, “Gay is who you really are–it’s your true nature.”

Perhaps we should look at the big picture behind these opposing claims.

A Psychological Solution To An Either-Or Predicament

A solution to this “complex question demanding a simple answer” can be found in the psychological understanding of homosexuality. Following in a long-established–and never disproven–psychodynamic tradition, reparative therapists see SSA as a symbolic defense against the trauma of attachment loss.

Having failed to fully identify with his own gender, the man with SSA romanticizes what he lacks–falling in love with something “out there” that a normal developmental process would have caused to be internalized, not eroticized. (As one gay-activist psychologist, Daryl Bem, aptly explained, the man with SSA “eroticizes what was exotic” in childhood. Bem, though, thinks it is perfectly normal for one’s own gender to feel mysterious and “exotic.”)

Men in Reparative Therapy® disagree; they want to “de-mystify” males and maleness–making them no longer “exotic”–and to have relationships with men characterized by mutuality and authenticity. They believe their biological design makes it clear that humanity was created to partner with the opposite sex.

Nevertheless, these men still have strong unmet needs for male affection, understanding, and affirmation. Utilizing their new adaptive skills to recognize same-sex attractions as “signals,” they know that when homosexual impulses recur, this is an internal indicator that “Something in my life is out of balance.”

The client now knows his unwanted attraction is not about “that other guy,” but about himself. He understands that it is not about sex, but about his present feelings about himself as he relates to others. The recurrence of temptation is a warning that he has compromised his healthy self-needs–most often, through a lack of authentic relational engagement. By authentic engagement, we mean consistently relating to other men in the assertive stance; freeing themselves of shame; maintaining deeply affirming relationships with close male friends; and not allowing themselves to be disempowered or “drained” in relationships with women.

One man, at the very end of his therapy, said, “Thank you, homosexuality. You have forced me to look at deeper issues I tried to avoid.” Similarly, psychotherapist Richard Cohen, when asked by a TV interviewer if he had any further same-sex temptations, answered, “Yes, I do–when I am not taking care of myself.”

Here is what a former client says he learned in therapy:

Therapy has helped me to connect more with men as brothers to be trusted. For most of my adult life, I only felt fearful of and alienated around men–especially men of my own age group. I never felt I belonged to their circle and always feared their rejection.

The general pattern these last few years has tended to be the opposite: I feel connected to most men and at ease in their company, and if and when I feel self-conscious and fearful, I challenge myself to surrender my fears, so that I can reconnect with both my inner man and the men around me.

I’ve becoming more emotionally assertive in situations where formerly I’d be controlled by shame, and in due course, I have developed an unprecedented level of authenticity with others, especially men. I am much better able to read the emotions I am feeling in my body, and I have more access to my overall emotional experiences.

If one thing angers me in life it is this: when gay apologists claim that to reject a ‘gay identity” is to be in denial of my true self. My personal experience tells me the opposite! My therapy has helped bring about in me more self-acceptance, peace and feeling accepted by men, more than was ever conceivably the case in the years since puberty started. When I feel masculine within, I have no emotional need to draw on the men ‘out there’ who are external to me. This is because I feel at one with them. If, however, I don’t deal with my shame, then my masculinity becomes ‘covered over’ and my heart then gravitates to symbols of masculinity found outside myself. I then feel disconnected both from myself, others–particularly men, and from God.

I have abandoned most of the suspicion and discomfort of women I carried around for all my adult life. I see more of the beauty of the opposite sex now than I ever did previously.

Were these changes an ‘accident,’ unconnected to my therapy? I think not. Was my therapy ‘dangerous,’ as some critics with an ideological axe to grind try to claim? Well, if growing in self-acceptance, and feeling now that I belong around men is ‘dangerous,’ then I want more of it!!!!!!

The extent to which my therapy has reaped, and is still reaping results depends largely on how much I challenge myself to continue to implement what I have learned.

Coming Back Home

The Judeo-Christian concept of humanity and traditional psychodynamic psychology share the same understanding that human nature is supposed to “function according to its design.” Both envision mankind as part of a universal heterosexual natural order, where some people struggle with SSA, but it is not intrinsic to their designed nature.

This “signal” view of SSA acknowledges the ongoing nature of the change process, and contradicts the “intrinsically gay” claim. Thus, we see the occasional reemergence of the homosexual impulse not as proof of the truth of gay anthropology, but a call to come back home again to one’s authentic self. Looking at the issue from this “signal” perspective, we see that a gay worldview–both as a personal and political force–is not vindicated, but disempowered.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

Healing moments occur when the client feels seemingly “unbearable” affect, while at the same moment, experiencing the support of the therapist.

Recent advances in psychotherapy have focused on the central importance of affect in the therapeutic process.

Evidence is mounting for our understanding the therapeutic alliance as an “affective correcting experience” (Schore, 1991). Affects–the neurotransmitters of human relations — connect the person with his emotional environment. Affect-Focused Therapy (AFT) is about the way we attach, detach, and re-attach. Treatment focuses on the removal of blocks that disconnect the client from his core feelings.

The particular meeting place of Reparative Therapy® and Affect-Focused Therapy lies in our view that homosexuality is fundamentally an attachment problem. For many of our clients, same-sex behavior appears to be an attempt to repair an insecure attachment to the father. Emotional disregulation, most often in the form of shame blocking masculine assertion, drives many of our same-sex attracted (SSA) clients toward unwanted homosexual enactment. Homosexual activity, fantasy and ideation serve as temporary compensation for failure of the attachment bond.

But we do not reduce SSA solely to father-son attachment failure; in fact, we believe that some homosexual development may well have begun with problems in mother-son attunement. Indeed, the effectiveness of Reparative Therapy® is increased by use of techniques that also explore early mother-son attachment problems. Because the mother-child bond shapes and refines our earliest sense of self, therapy must also revisit that attachment.

Interpersonal rapport is, in the final analysis, what characterizes our deepest humanity and determines our internal equilibrium. Thus our treatment process has moved away from more traditional attempts at resolving intra-psychic conflict, and more in the direction of affect regulation, with the therapist as affect-regulation facilitator.

The quintessential model of affective contact is the Double Loop, a powerful therapeutic achievement between client and therapist.

A Radical Therapeutic Resonance

The flow of affect is determined by attachment. Traditional psychodynamic concepts such as “internalized objects” are metaphors for this biologically based phenomenon of neurological transmission. What we call “internalization of the object,” for example, is actually a body-held memory–a conditioned affective response.

AFT requires the therapist to exert a level of emotional engagement and empathy that is far beyond, even contradictory to, the traditional psychotherapeutic approach. AFT concentrates upon the fine details of the effective intersubjective therapeutic exchange. The therapist must be fully emotionally “present” in order to elicit, and deeply share, the client’s visceral experience.

Affective expansion has been shown to occur when there is a radical level of client-therapist resonance. Utilizing AFT techniques, the reparative therapist attempts to evoke the client’s expression of core affects and to expand his somatic awareness. As trust and confidence build within their exchange, the client begins to feel confident enough to experience an authentic exchange with other men. Later, he can begin to more authentically engage women.

Attunement Changes Brain Structure

Each person’s neurological structure is designed to be synchronized with other neurological structures. As Stern reminds us, “Our brains were designed to lock in with other brains” (2002). But human attachments can break down (as illustrated by the Double Bind) and then reconnect (through the Double Loop). Interruptions of affect–through anxiety, shame, and other inhibitors–disconnect the person from his emotional environment, causing a shutdown.

Personal identity development is the cumulative result of years of attunement with others. Our level of attunement with others, determines our inner relationship with ourselves. Traumatic malattunement–the inevitable consequence of Double Bind communication–creates shame, and shame creates intrapsychic detachment. In contrast, attunement with the therapist in the Working Alliance (a consequence of the Double Loop experience) resolves this barrier of shame and fosters self-reattachment.

Thus, an affective “turning on,” or openness, is the goal of Reparative Therapy®. In AFT, the therapist maintains empathic attunement in the Working Alliance to facilitate unification of the left brain and right brain hemispheres. In so doing, the he metaphorically “embeds” himself between the client’s right brain and his left brain.

It is through this connectedness with the therapist that the client allows himself to feel the bodily sensations that are associated with his painful early experiences. Healing moments occur when the client can feel what seems to be unbearable core feeling, while at the same moment, experiencing the care and support of the therapist. Thus, in a process of interactive repair, their attuned relationship actually changes the neurological structure of the brain.

For the client who grew up in the narcissistic family, the early trauma of the parental Double Bind has created an attunement split. Through reattunement, the Double Loop unifies the client with himself, then unifies the self with others. Attunement with another leads back to greater attunement with self.

From Anxiety To Spontaneity

Affect-Focused Therapy rapidly accelerates the client’s encounter with his fear-filled affective life. The therapist encourages him to feel and express his anxiety-provoking bodily feelings and sensations, while at the same time, supporting him in maintaining their interpersonal contact. Toleration of this previously unbearable affect is possible because of their mutual emotional rapport.

Through that Double Loop experience, the client learns that painful emotions are not intolerable in themselves– but rather, it was the early sense of parental abandonment associated with those emotions that actually rendered them intolerable.

The goal of therapy, therefore, is the integration of conflicting affects. When the client experiences the reintegration of these once negative-seeming affects, he experiences a surprising eruption of spontaneity, authenticity, vitality, and a feeling of self-integrity–all of which is prompted by the restructuring of the True Self. This restructuring is expressed as a greater outflow of energy in relating to others, and less preoccupation with oneself.

With the emergence of the True Self, we gradually see the establishment of new friendships and the strengthening of old and long-neglected family ties.

A Subtle Synchronicity

When Affect-Focused Therapy functions at its best, we see a corrective experience of sublime attunement with subtle, highly nuanced human communication. Therapist and client share an implicit knowledge–that non-verbal, pre-explicit experience that can occur between two people in the recognition that “I know that you know that I know.”

In many hours of analyzing audio- and videotape recordings of actual psychotherapy sessions at my clinic, I have seen how this subtle synchronicity emerges, with each person in the therapeutic dyad eventually having the sense of what the other is trying to express. Stern offers the example of two people kissing: the speed, direction, angle of approach–all perfectly coordinated for a “soft landing” (without crashing teeth)–is a miracle of psychic intimacy with “maximal complexity” of thinking, intending and then doing. Stern says it simply:

“Our minds are not created alone; they are co-created. Our nervous system is ready to be taught by other peoples’ nervous systems, which transforms us.”

Psychotherapy is the second opportunity to integrate one’s emotional life. In attempting to explain how this therapeutic second opportunity works through the model of sublime attunement, Stern speaks of the importance of setting the correct tempo for “moving along”–the unspoken regulation of the rhythm and intensity of the back-and-forth between two people. He also notes the importance of “field regulation,” which is the assessment of the other’s receptivity with questions such as “Do you really like me?” and “What’s actually happening between us right now?” He is particularly interested in what he calls “‘now’ moments,” when the entire frame of the picture alters to zoom in on two people as they are pulled into the present moment, while experiencing an intense “existential presentness.”

These “now moments” contain a heightened anxiety and the sense that somehow, “this moment is important,” either for good or ill in the relationship. Personal exposure and vulnerability are a basic part of these moments; we see an excitement, a recognition of each other on a deeper level, and perhaps a slight, embarrassed smile that recognizes this sometimes-awkward vulnerability and personal exposure. Such moments, which Martin Buber calls “moments of meeting,” cannot be forced; but as therapists, we can certainly, as Stern says, “be ready to coax such opportunities into existence.”

Stern’s description of the textured aspects of these central moments constitutes our Double Loop.

Two Binary Affects: Assertion Vs. Shame

AFT helps us distinguish the basic “on” (attaching) affects versus the “off” (detaching) affects. Common detaching affects include anxiety, fear, and shame. Attaching affects are trust, empathy, and love. This fundamental “open/closed” distinction, described by Fosha as the “green signal” versus the “red signal,” is equivalent to the sympathetic versus the parasympathetic neurological response.

Making the same distinction but in different words, Schore identifies affective openness and attunement, in contrast to a “freeze” response. This freeze response is much like Reparative Therapy’s “shame” response–the consequence of the boy’s feeling humiliated for his masculine gestures.

Clients have expressed this experience of the affective shift as the difference between–

exploding – imploding
heart open – heart closed
inflated – deflated
expansive – constrictive

These vitality affects versus inhibitory affects are illustrated by the Pike Phenomenon (Wolverton, 2005). In an experiment, a pike fish is placed in a tank with live minnows. The pike immediately begins eating all the minnows it sees. Then an invisible glass cylinder is placed over the pike, separating it from the minnows. Attempts to eat the minnows result in the pike hitting its nose on the glass cylinder, causing it pain. The cylinder is then removed, but the pike, anticipating pain, makes no more attempt to eat the minnows. The vitality response has been lost and the inhibitory response is substituted.

The Pike Phenomenon illustrates a conditioned response that inhibits healthy assertion. For our clients, there is an anticipation of shame for their gendered assertion.

Anticipatory shame represents a somatic “flashback” which switches the body into a defensive, shut-down mode.

Emotional Shutdown On A Biological Level

It is sometimes helpful to explain to the client that his shutdown is a physiological, bodily reaction. This explanation helps him observe his own bodily shifts as they occur in the moment. Developing a self-observant stance can increase the client’s ego strength as he observes his body (not “himself,” but “his body”) shift to the shut-down mode. The facilitation of the client’s observation of his own bodily response is similar to Eye-Movement Desensitization Therapy’s repeated instruction to the client to “go back to” and then “let go of” the traumatic image.

Another term for the Shame Moment is the “freeze response,” in which the person loses his somatic vitality and the body becomes rigid and stiff. This is similar to the Freudian concept of dissociation, the earliest phenomenon of study in the history of psychoanalysis, which is triggered when the person anticipates a recurrence in the present of some past trauma. In dissociation there is a “segmentation of minds,” each possessing its own “cluster of thoughts, feelings and memories” (Jung) which are held in the body. When someone is “in one mind” (a cluster of embodied memories), it is hard for him to recall the other “mind,” and if the other mind is recalled–i.e., felt in the body–then it has already left the first mind.

For example, when a person walks into a restaurant feeling hungry and smelling good food, he is in one “mind”; two hours later, when he has eaten his dinner and walks out, he is in a very different “mind,” and it is virtually impossible for him to recapture the totality of that earlier mindset of hunger and anticipation.

A client reported going on a weekend trip where he was camping and shooting with his friends. This experience put him into the Assertion state, where couldn’t recall the other “mind” of homosexual temptation. A week later, when he was back into the shame zone, the opposite had occurred: he couldn’t recall the mindset of Assertion.

Shame Posture Vs. The Assertive State

Reparative Therapy® carefully examines the self-states, especially regarding the scenario preceding homosexual enactment. The simultaneous experience of feeling shame in the body, and at the same time experiencing the acceptance and understanding of the attuned therapist, works to diminish the physiological “charge” of shame.

When clients are in the Assertive Stance, they can vaguely recall, but cannot intensely feel, their homoerotic attractions. When they shift into the Shame Posture, they cannot recall what it was like not to have compelling homoerotic feelings.

Shame, as we have noted, has, like all other the self-states, an evolutionary survival function. It is a powerful controlling tool used by the “pack” for socialization that aids survival of the group–and thus the individual. (Shame, it should be noted, is not the same as guilt–guilt results from a negative judgment of one’s own behavior, while shame is a basic physiological response.) A child will be shamed–which is to say, threatened by expulsion from the pack–for behaviors that risk the stability and survival of the group. (Some researchers posit that this autonomic response of shame may be the biological basis for conscience.)

The self-state of shame brings to mind the work of Freud’s mentor, Pierre Janet, known as the father of dissociation. Janet laid the foundation for Freud’s later work on hysteria– where past events, when held outside of consciousness, still retain an influence on present behavior. Dissociation represents the mind’s attempt to block out traumatic childhood memories which still, on an unconscious level, feel overwhelmingly threatening.

Somatic Shift Leads To New Meaning

Reparative Therapy® focuses on Body Work because we understand the unconscious mind to hold a buried “body memory” that operates without cognitive awareness. The body does not deceive us, but the mind can do so. Freud said the goal of psychoanalysis was that “Where ‘id’ was, there ego shall be”(1933). He meant that psychoanalysis replaces unconscious, irrational impulses with self-awareness and rationality. We may revise this dictum to propose that “Where the somatic shift is, there new meaning shall be,” because the mind can give new understanding to body memories as they are reexperienced.

For example, the gay-identified man sees an attractive male and experiences a sexual arousal. His self-understanding is “I’m sexually attracted to him because I’m gay. Such attractions are normal and natural for me.” For this man, an attractive male is associated with sexual gratification, and he comes to believe that such feelings authentically define him.

However, the non-gay homosexual has the same somatic reaction to the same attractive man, but his internal narrative is quite different. He says: “I’m attracted to that man because he possesses qualities of masculinity that I feel are lacking right now within myself. And what can I do to change that?”

This is the essential difference between the gay-identified man and the non-gay homosexual–the way they interpret their body responses.

What the gay-identified man takes at face value, the non-gay homosexually oriented man instead, chooses to question. The gay man believes this attraction is “out there,” reflecting his true self-identity.

But the “non-gay” SSA man sees the same feeling as a catalyst for asking himself, “It’s not about the other guy’s attractiveness. What is going on ‘in here’ right now to generate these feelings that contradict my true, designed nature?'”

References

Fosha, Diana (2000). The Transforming Power of Affect: A Model for Accelerated Change. N.Y.: Basic Books.

Freud, S. (1933). New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. S.E., volume 22, p. 80.

Schore, A. (1991) “Early Superego development: The emergence of shame and narcissistic affect regulation in the practicing period,” Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, 14, 187-205.

Stern, D. (2002). “Why Do People Change in Psychotherapy?” Presentation. University of California at Los Angeles, March 9, 2002; Continuing Education Seminars, 1023 Westholme Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90024.

Wolverton Mountain Enterprises, 2005, www.wolverton-mountain.com/articles/pike.htm.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

The gender-identity phase of development is marked by a surge of “ambition” to achieve gender competence. When there is a failure in this phase of development, a core identity injury results. Grief work helps the client overcome the injury.

The triadic narcissistic family offers a useful model for understanding male homosexuality and its foundation in a failure of attachment to the same-sex parent. The narcissistic family is not found in the backgrounds of all same-sex attracted (SSA) men; however, we often see evidence of it in our clinical work with men seeking to overcome SSA.

In normal families, children know they are important, and they sense their needs and feelings as important to their parents. But rather than providing an understanding, accurately attuned, and supportive emotional environment for the son’s developing masculine self, the narcissistic parents, as a parental team, systematically “fail to see” the boy as a gendered individual person.

“Shaming” Masculinity vs. “Failing to Elicit” It

Recent biological research suggests that some boys have experienced a biological developmental “accident” in which their developing brain was never completely masculinized while they were still in utero. When such children reach the gender-identity phase of about two years old, the “surge of ambition” to achieve masculine competency will be much weaker than that of the typical boy. Such a boy may fail to develop a normal masculine gender identity if the parents do not actively elicit it from him. Such parents did not actively “shame” the son for his strivings but simply failed to be attuned to the boy’s special need for active support in calling forth his true, gendered nature.

The Problem of Malattunement. In this family, through distinctly different interactions with each parent, the boy experiences parental malattunement in his efforts to acquire his masculine self-identity. Within the narcissistic family the child must be “for” the parents, i.e. “the parental team.” The malattunement he most often experienced was through being ignored/belittled by father, and manipulated into taking on the role of intimate companion to mother.

There may be anger against the self as a defense against his own weakness and inability to break away from the mother to acquire a distinct masculine identity. In addition to that anger against the self, the child may have been made to feel bad about his feeling sad. “You’re upsetting everybody else.” “There’s no reason to be unhappy and you have nothing to complain about.”

Within this narcissistic family structure, the boy’s unsuccessful attempts at gender actualization result in an attachment loss. Together, the parents evoked an abandonment-annihilation trauma within the boy for which now, as a man, he must grieve. This is the core trauma which has led to such a man’s same-sex attraction in adulthood.

The Boy’s Temperament as a Key Factor

Temperament is a key factor in the failure to gender-identify. Another boy who was less temperamentally sensitive — perhaps even this boy’s own brother who may have been more outgoing, emotionally resilient, and assertive– would likely push harder and be more persistent in seeking his father’s attention, making it less easy for the father to detach from him. By the same token, an assertive and outgoing boy often has more in common with the father and he will be actively sought out by the father. The assertive-resilient boy will also be less likely to form an over-intimacy with the mother and to seek out her sheltering protections as a means of avoiding the masculine challenge.

Thus, it is the emotionally vulnerable boy– sensitive, intuitive, sociable, gentle, easily hurt– who is most likely to incur a gender-identity injury and to give up the masculine challenge. This boy needed special help to leave the comfortable sphere of the mother; and perhaps his father did not actively injure him, but simply failed to do the essential job– essential for this particular boy— of actively calling forth his true masculine nature.

Attachment Loss and Shame

Clients express not only a sense of gender deficit, but a deeper, not easily articulated sense of loss and emptiness. Various men have tried to describe it in their own way. It is that despairing place that is the source of homosexual impulse. It is also the source of the client’s deepest resistance to treatment.

The developmental sequence is first attachment loss, then gender deficit. If homosexuality is a form of attachment loss, then the question becomes; “Why do some children who experience insecure attachment eventually adapt to the loss, while other children do not, and develop maladaptive defenses against it?” To begin to answer this question requires, first of all, the understanding that the child’s defense is not homosexuality per se, but a gender-identity deficit- which he only later unconsciously seeks to “repair” through homosexual enactment.

Said one client:

“When I went into the gay porn sites, as soon as I got started, I realized how depressed I had been. I realized, too, that I knew I was depressed but was avoiding doing anything about it.”

“The power of gay porn images reflects my own inadequacy. The power of the image is not what he is, but what I am not. And I can go pursue the distraction of what he is, or confront the painful reality of what I am not.”

The gender-identity phase, like all other phases of the child’s development, is marked by a surge of “ambition” to achieve a particular competence. Along with this biologically driven “ambition” comes a narcissistic investment in the outcome. When there is a failure in that phase of development, there is a vulnerability to shame. Thus, this understanding of the homosexual condition sees not just a gender-identity deficit, but also a core identity injury which brings us to the use of grief work.

The person with a homosexual problem will exhibit psychological features commonly found in any client who has become stuck in pathological grief. Those include excessive dependency upon others for self-esteem, emotional maladaption, thoughts of suicide, instability and insecurity, and difficulty in establishing and maintaining long-term intimate relationships. These symptoms are a defense against mourning the loss of authentic attachment to both parents. Thus it ironic that declaring himself “gay” is a defense against profound, underlying sadness.

Consequently, the therapist will attempt to offer a “corrective experience”; i.e., serving as the good parent by not punishing– but hearing, understanding and even valuing the experience of grief. The therapist must also recognize and interpret the client’s primary defense, which is the client’s anticipation of being shamed for feeling his loss. This is the essential function of shame– to defend against grief. It is easier to blame himself (and spend the rest of life punishing himself for not feeling loved) than to face the profound reality of loss of the parent’s accurate attunement and the attachment he should have had with his father. The client must openly share that fear of shame with the therapist, in order to engage the opportunity for healing.

Deep grief work is often met with deeply entrenched resistance precisely because of the intense pain resulting from the loss of attachment. The client literally feels that if he expresses his pain, he will die. This primal feeling is biologically rooted and evidenced in mammalian group behavior; after all, the shunned, rejected member of the pack rightly senses that he will not be able to survive alone.

It is not the pain, but the fear of the pain which is the greater source of resistance in grief work. The desperate quality of this distress is understandable since, from childhood, separation meant annihilation. Now, as an adult, the client in therapy is still not secure in the belief that he can enter that deep pain and survive. So it is not reliving the trauma but the fear of reliving it which is the greatest source of resistance.

Grief work is approached through the client’s own presenting complaints and his self-identified conflicts. Those conflicts often involve the client’s shame for efforts at masculine assertion. When pursued, these conflicts often lead the client into deeper emotions. Most often, sad and angry feelings will surface when the client allows himself to fully feel the sadness and emptiness associated with his attachment loss.

The next phase of therapy requires a meaningful integration of the loss. Now, as an adult in therapy, the client with SSA can re-create a coherent narrative — namely, the making of meaning now, in the present, of his attachment losses in the past.

Resolution means the client must decide to live in a realistic present, making realistic plans for the future. He chooses to have a healthy perception of reality with the people in his life today– not needing them to be better than they are. No longer is there the inarticulate sense of narcissistic entitlement that others are obliged to compensate him for his past hurts.

This grief work is a humanizing process, in that it demands the abandonment of narcissistic defenses against experiencing deep humility. The work of grief is the back-and-forth tension between two inhibiting affects – shame and fear, versus the other two core affects – sadness and anger.

Resolution necessitates the assimilation of the loss into one’s personal schema, one’s worldview or personal narrative. That narrative requires a coherent understanding of himself today. As the client faces his illusions and distortions, he spontaneously expresses curiosity about his true identity. “Who am I other than my false self?”

Resolution is the catalyst for personal growth, identity transformation, and the establishment of new ways of relating. It means growing beyond emotional isolation and chronic loneliness, and making a renewed investment in authentic relatedness with people of both genders. Along with this greater capacity for genuine intimacy, comes a diminishment of same-sex attraction’s illusionary power.

Reference

Nicolosi, J. (1991) Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality. N.J.: Jason Aronson.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

No one wants to be the bearer of bad news about a group that has suffered discrimination.

Statistics tell us that gay sex is often tied to substance abuse, promiscuity and unsafe sex practices. A significant minority of gay men also participate in sadomasochism, public sex in bathhouses and group sex.

Many people, both gay and straight, become curious about this “dark side of life” and briefly dabble in it. Soon, however, they come to reject such things as degrading, destructive of their integrity as human beings, and “not who I am.” Why, then, do such things maintain an enduring foothold in the gay community?

This phenomenon is not restricted to a fringe of the gay subculture. Even Andrew Sullivan–a Catholic and well-known conservative in the gay movement–defends the “the beauty and mystery and spirituality of sex, even anonymous sex” in his book Love Undetectable.

And in a speech to a gathering of college students, the Rev. Mel White was also reported by Pastoral Care Ministries Newsletter (Spring 2000) to have said that he does not “struggle” with pornography, but uses it. The reverend is the leader of Soulforce, a gay group that pickets Protestant denominational meetings to push for the blessing of same-sex unions.

Writers Gabriel Rotello (author of Sexual Ecology) and Michelangelo Signorile (Life Outside) are both conservatives in the sense that they have spoken out strongly about the dangers of irresponsible sex and sexually transmitted diseases, and have taken rancorous criticism from the gay community’s more radical faction.

Yet when Signorile speaks of the “rauchy, impersonal atmosphere” of sex in public parks and bathrooms, he is careful to note that he, himself, would never judge it:

“There’s nothing morally wrong with this–and I say that as someone who has certainly had my share of hot public sex, beginning when I was a teenager and well into my adulthood.” (1)

Similarly, Gabriel Rotello says he has been maligned for his role as a so-called “moralistic crusader” against unsafe sex. Yet he explains:

“Let me simply say that I have no moral objection to promiscuity, provided it doesn’t lead to massive epidemics of fatal diseases. I enjoyed the ’70’s, I didn’t think there was anything morally wrong with the lifestyle of the baths. I believe that for many people, promiscuity can be meaningful, liberating and fun.” (2)

Taking a Closer Look

When NARTH’s literature describes the dark side of the gay movement, this is not done for the purpose of moralizing or gay bashing. Our primary purpose is to identify and understand a psychological pattern.

Mainstream psychologists are usually too conflicted (or simply uninformed) to acknowledge any pattern or assign any significance to this sexual radicalism.

Indeed, much of the language of psychologists has been purged of evaluative judgment that could explain the meaning and significance of a particular behavior. A 1975 Dictionary of Psychology states that “fetishism, homosexuality, exhibitionism, sadism and masochism are the most common types of perversion.” Now, 25 years later, the word “perversion” is never used for any of those conditions; they are known as “deviations” or “variations.”

Emotional Deficits Become Sexual Fixations

But because homosexuality is deficit-based, the dark side of gay life–characterized by sexual addictions and fixations–keeps stubbornly emerging, in spite of public-relations efforts to submerge it.

Culture Facts, an online publication of Family Research Council, recently reported on a street fair that illustrates this paradox. The fair was sponsored in part by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF)–two very prominent groups committed to mainstreaming and normalizing homosexuality.

Yet that event featured public whippings, body piercing, public sex, sado-masochism, and public nakedness by parade marchers. Fair booths sold bumper stickers that said, “God masturbates,” and “I Worship Satan,” and merchants peddled studded dog collars and leather whips (not for their dogs). On the sidelines of the public fair, a man dressed as a Catholic nun was strapped to a cross with his buttocks exposed, and onlookers were invited to whip him for a two-dollar donation.

How long can psychologists be in denial about the significance of the dark side, and ignore what it implies about the homosexual condition?

And there’s a matter of even greater concern. How long will psychologists eagerly throw open the door to gay life for every sexually confused teenager?

Endnotes

(1) “Nostalgia Trip,” by Michaelangelo Signorile, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Spring 1998, Volume Five, No. 2, p. 27.

(2) “This is Sexual Ecology,” by Gabriel Rotello, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Spring 1998, Volume Five, No. 2, p. 24.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

All the psychotherapists who join NARTH (now known as The Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity) agree on one essential point–that reorientation therapy is ethical, and that it can be effective for clients who seek it. All strongly defend the client’s right to choose his own direction in treatment.

Beyond that point of agreement around which we all rally, there are some differences.

Some take the position that the condition is a developmental disorder–particularly, a gender-identity disorder–which leads to a romantic idealization and sexualization of the qualities that the individual experiences as deficient within himself.

But other therapists disagree. Some prominent members–even some of our Scientific Advisory Committee members–refuse to take a position on the question of pathology.

Massachusetts psychologist Dr. Uriel Meshoulam, for example, believes the therapist should address the subjective problem of the client’s suffering, and not concern himself with the objective question of disorder. “We must allow the person who seeks treatment to define undesirability and unhappiness,” he says.

In an editorial, Dr. Meshoulam explained the reasoning behind this view:

“Psychotherapy is appropriate when applied to unwanted behaviors and unhappy constructions, rather than to so-called abnormal disorders…Preventing a person who is unhappy with his or her construction of self from seeking treatment is…oppressive.

“Many men and women are unhappy with their construction of their sexuality. It is of questionable ethics to try to convince them that they are ‘wrong,’ and try to convert them to the therapist’s way of thinking. Clients who had been greeted with ‘gay-affirmative’ statements from therapists often told me that they felt grossly misunderstood, and despaired over the prospect of having nowhere to go with their problem.

“…I have seen people who enter therapy with a wide range of unhappy constructions and attitudes toward their sexuality. As a result of therapy, many of them learn to redefine themselves and their sexuality, and thus enhance their potential.”

Some other therapists, including our Scientific Advisory Board member Dr. Mark Stern, take the position that homosexuality is not a disorder, but a missed potential–a closing off of a part of oneself and a “saying no” to generativity.

Some prominent practitioners outside of NARTH take an apparent middle ground on this issue. Dr. Robert Spitzer, the psychiatrist known as the architect of the 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from the list of disorders, maintains that homosexuality was not “normalized” when it was removed from the DSM–only that it was no longer categorized as a disorder. He believes this decision was appropriate because the condition is not invariably assoaciated with subjective distress, nor a generalized impairment in social effectiveness or functioning.

At that time he referred to homosexuality as an “irregular” form of sexuality, and more recently, he agreed that when a person has no capacity for heterosexual arousal, “something is not working.”

There is clearly room for practitioners of both persuasions within NARTH, all working together to defend the client’s right to pursue change.

I myself take the view that homosexuality represents a developmental adaptation to trauma, and that it is potentially preventable. I see strong evidence for the classic psychodyamic position that homosexual behavior is rooted in a sense of gender-identity deficit, and representative of a drive to “repair” that deficit. When the underlying emotional needs and identification deficits are addressed, clinical experience has shown me that the unwanted fantasies and behavior diminish, and for many people, there follows an awakening of some degree of heterosexual responsiveness.

Indeed, the debate continues.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

Bem’s E.B.E. theory relies on two ideas characteristic of gay culture: that gender differences are arbitrary and culturally determined, and that society needs to relax its sexual boundaries.

In “Exotic Becomes Erotic: A Developmental Theory of Sexual Orientation,” (Psychological Review 1996, Vol. 103, #2, pp. 320-335) and his upcoming book, Daryl Bem explains the formation of male homosexuality in a six-step sequence of events called E.B.E. theory.

A former philosophy teacher of mine had a saying: “For every complex question there is a simple answer–and it’s usually wrong.”

E.B.E. theory attempts to respond to a complex question with just this sort of simple answer. With its mechanistic emphasis on autonomic arousal, one wonders why the paper was not published instead in the Journal of Neuroanatomy. Bem’s theory explicitly omits any intrapsychic and interpersonal explanations for homosexuality, implying that normal psychosexual development is no more complex or meaningful than stimulus-response mechanism.

He begins with (a) “biological variables,” which predetermine (b) “childhood temperament,” resulting in (c) “gender-inappropriate behavior,” which causes the boy to (d) “feel different from same-sex peers,” which creates within the boy (e) “non-specific autonomic arousal” toward other boys, which is eventually experienced as (f) “erotic/romantic attractions,” as follows:

A. Biological Variables (e.g., genes, prenatal hormones)

B. Childhood Temperaments (e.g., aggression, activity level)

C. Sex-Typical/Atypical Activity & Playmate Preferences (Gender Conformity/Nonconformity)

D. Feeling Different from Opposite/Same-Sex Peers (dissimiliar, unfamiliar, exotic)

E. Nonspecific Autonomic Arousal to Opposite/Same-Sex Peers

F. Erotic/Romantic Attraction to Opposite/Same-Sex Persons (Sexual Orientation)

Thus Bem traces adult sexual orientation to childhood preferences for sex-typical or sex-atypical activities and friendships. Typical children–those who conform to the norm for their gender–grow up feeling different from the opposite sex; thus they will be attracted to the opposite sex in adulthood. On the contrary, children who grow up feeling different from their own sex in childhood will typically grow up homosexual. He cites one study in which 75% of the non-gender-conforming boys grew up to be homosexual or bisexual.

Dr. John Money’s well-known book, The Sissy Boy Syndrome, describes a similar scenario, as does Zucker and Bradley’s Gender Identity Disorder and Psychosexual Problems in Children and Adolescents, reviewed in the August 1996 NARTH Bulletin.

The heart of his theory, as Bem explains, is “the proposition that individuals become erotically or romantically attracted to those who were dissimilar or unfamiliar to them in childhood.” Thus he sees homosexuality as nothing more or less than a biological predisposition to gender nonconformity, which leads to heightened physiological arousal in response to the perceived strangeness of the opposite sex.

I have counseled over 400 men in my work as a clinician specializing in Reparative Therapy® of homosexuality, and I can attest that Bem’s description of the childhood sequence of events is correct– at least superficially. His theory agrees with Reparative Therapy’s primary principle: that we are erotically attracted to what we are not identified with. Indeed, many homosexually-oriented men report the feeling of not having been “one of the boys,” and having been “on the outside looking in” at male activities throughout childhood and adolescence. Most of my clients were all too familiar with their mothers, but could never understand their fathers. Even when they grew to adulthood, men remained mysteries.

But the problem is that Bem is attempting to explain the whole with a part of the whole. This is called reductionism, or as we see in E.B.E. theory, deconstructionism. Bem essentially reduces developmental psychology to a social deconstructionist view of sex, in which the ideas of heterosexuality as normal, and identification with one’s own sex as normal, are deemed to be mere social constructs.

The Missing “How”

Essentially, Bem shifts the entire discourse away from established principles of psychosexual development onto the neurological mechanism of “excitability.” Citing the “well-documented observation that novelty and unfamiliarity heighten arousal,” he assumes autonomic arousal obliterates all other considerations.

He gives no consideration to the boy’s authentic needs for acceptance, affection and approval from members of the same sex, particularly his father and male peers, and his genuine need to experience himself as a boy-like-other-boys. Nowhere is there acknowledgment of the boy’s natural emotional need for attachment and identification. For Bem, even love is reduced to autonomic arousal.

He avoids the expansive vista of family systems research, clinical case histories, self-report from homosexuals transitioning to heterosexuality, and an understanding of the psychotherapeutic change process. He says nothing of the well-established psychodynamic understanding of the process of gender identification, especially through relationship with the same-sex parent (Bieber, 1962; Hatterer, 1970; Kronemeyer, 1970; Mayerson and Lief, 1965); ignores family systems and object-relations theory, and psychoanalytic/oedipal theory (Socarides, 1968); along with the well-documented, poor father-son relationship for the male homosexual (Bieber 1962). He makes no reference to van den Aardweg’s (1985, 1986) deeper understanding of the meaning of same-sex peer relationships. Thus his model dismisses both subjective experience and personal meaning.

With this dismissal, he fails to understand the developmental significance of critical moments in the life of the prehomosexual boy. One such moment was described to me by a 35-year-old client:

“I recall the exact moment I knew I was gay. I was twelve years old and we were taking a shortcut to class. We were walking across the gym and through the locker room, and an older guy was coming out of the shower. He was wet and naked and I thought, Wow!”

I asked the client to again tell me exactly what his experience was. He became very pensive. Then he answered,

“The feeling was, ‘Wow, I wish I was him’.”

As a little boy, this client had been asthmatic and physically frail. Clearly, the “older guy” coming out of the shower was his idealized self–all that he wasn’t, and wished he could be.

Unmet normal developmental needs predispose the boy to the “Wow!” experience, and later, through influences from an increasingly gay-affirming culture, these feelings are interpreted as “Therefore I must be gay.” This shift occurs during the critical erotic transitional phase, when the same-sex attachment needs of the child change into erotic attraction, and identificatory strivings rooted in same-sex emotional deficit begin to feel sexual. When the client recognizes that these attractions actually represent same-sex identification needs, then the healing of homosexuality begins.

Bem says he omits consideration of the deeper developmental meaning of experience because the literature fails to establish a “coherent, experienced-based developmental theory of sexual orientation.” The problem, he says, is in psychology’s past attempts to “empirically measure experience.” (He will make up for this lack, he says, by finding a measure for a neurological concomitant of experience.)

On a Shaky Foundation: Bell and Weinberg

Bem builds his model almost exclusively on Bell, Weinberg amd Hammersmith’s Sexual Preference: Its Development in Men and Women (1981), a study which claims to “once and for all” debunk the developmental and family factors linked to homosexuality. This study analyzes recollections of family experiences through a statistical procedure called path analysis. Originally designed for use by the hard sciences, path analysis has been called inappropriate for use in the social sciences (Brandstadter and Bernitzke, 1976).

Many writers have criticized the conclusions drawn by the Bell study (Gagnon, 1981, Reiss, 1982, DeLamater). In a review of the Bell study in Contemporary Sociology, Ira Reiss comments:

“It is hard to see how this study can ‘once and for all’ settle our thinking…the tendency to underplay the importance of the predictor variables, and thereby imply strong rejection of previous theories, is pervasive…there is a serious lack of theoretical development in handling the data…Overall, the book does not impress one as a development of theoretical insights into sexual preferences, but rather as an attempt to play down aspects of psychoanalytic and other, older views [emphasis added].”

Why did Bell, et al. so resoundingly dismiss the family data? Some sources see a desire to interpret the data for gay-advocacy purposes. In Gender Identity Disorder and Psychological Problems in Children and Adolescents, Zucker (1995) states:

“… we should note that the Bell, et al. study will ultimately have to be understood in a broader context–that of the sexual politics of our time.” (p. 240) “… [T]heir interpretation of their data was clearly colored by political correctness…If, in fact aspects of their family interaction and relationship data showed a departure from an ideal of optimal functioning in homosexual men, Bell, et al. (1981) … [tended] … to minimize the observed significant effects.

“…Influenced by the zeitgeist … [they] chose to interpret their data as showing that the glass was half empty, not half full” (p. 241).

Love as Fetish

Bem then reaches back for further supportive evidence of his E.B.E. theory to an 1887 reference explaining that “strong and vivid emotion” becomes associated with feelings of “love.” He quotes a literary piece in which a man, trying to woo a woman, did so by killing her pet pigeons. Her intense arousal at the sight of the suffering pigeons contributed to her falling in love with her suitor.

He reaches back further yet to a first-century Roman handbook called “The Art of Love.” In this handbook, Ovid advises any man who is interested in sexual seduction to take the woman to a gladiatorial tournament, where she would be more easily aroused with passion.

According to this “excitability” model, both homosexuality and heterosexuality are reduced to the psychology of the fetish. Fear, anger, hatred, sadism, masochism, romantic passion, enduring love–for Bem, all spring from the same source in mechanism.

The fetishes, in fact, he sees not as disorders, but as reflections of arbitrary cultural prejudices. Physical attributes not regarded by a culture as beautiful (feet, for example), when eroticized by individuals within that culture, cause that person to be (in Bem’s view) unfairly burdened by being called fetishists. It seems to him that heterosexual men from our culture who love women’s breasts should themselves be considered to have a fetish. But the problem with this deconstructionist view is that, as any clinician knows, the compelling drive and compulsive quality of the paraphilia is not the same as the heterosexual man’s normal attraction to female anatomy. Further, he reduces all normal sexual attraction to the level of a fetish. Perhaps for Bem, love itself is mere fetish.

While conceding that he doesn’t yet understand the specifics of precisely how exotic becomes erotic, he is quite satisfied to conclude:

“[I]t is sufficient to know that autonomic arousal, regardless of its source or affective tone, can subsequently be experienced cognitively, emotionally, and physiologically as erotic/romantic attraction. At that point, it is erotic/romantic attraction.” (p. 326)

E.B.E. theory is an attempt to contribute to a “different but equal” developmental model of sexual orientation, treating homosexuality and heterosexuality as the same phenomenon.

To accommodate his simplistic neurological model of the person, Bem must follow with a simplistic understanding of culture. He deems culture largely responsible for sexual object-choice, due to its “social constrictions of gender,” and repeatedly bemoans our “gender-polarizing culture”–but offers no non-gender-polarizing culture in contrast.

From the point of view of the gay community, Bem’s model makes an important contribution in that it describes a model of homosexual development which is non-pathological. (After thirty years of marriage and two children, he recently “came out” as gay.) “Indeed,” he says, “the gay community should be happy with E.B.E. theory because it views heterosexuality as no more biologically natural than homosexuality.”{1}

But by viewing homosexuality as essentially the same phenomenon as homosexuality, and by putting sexual orientation and romantic love on a par with fetishes, he disregards the larger significance of human relationships. Refusing to grant that heterosexuality is the mature outcome of psychosexual development, he contradicts a simple–and I believe accurate–working definition of the term “normal”: “that which functions according to its design.{2}

In support of this philosophy, he quotes his (apparently former) wife Sandra as she rather obscurely describes her apparent pansexuality:

“I am not now–and never have been–a ‘heterosexual,’ but neither have I been a ‘lesbian’ or a ‘bisexual’ …. The sex-of-partner dimension implicit in the three categories … seems irrelevant to my own particular pattern of erotic attraction and sexual experiences.

“Although some of the (very few) individuals to whom I have been attracted … have been men and some have been women, what those individuals have in common has nothing to do with either their biological sex, or mine–from which I conclude, not that I am attracted to both sexes, but that my sexuality is organized around dimensions other than sex.” (p.vii)

A Society Where Everyone Could Be Everyone Else’s Lover

Elaborating on his wife’s personal revelation, Daryl Bem proceeds to define his own utopian society. He describes a world often championed by gay theorists–one where everyone would potentially be everyone else’s lover, and gender would be insignificant. He envisions a…

“non-gender-polarizing culture that [does] not systematically estrange its children from either opposite sex, or same sex peers. Such children would not grow up to be asexual; rather, their erotic and romantic preferences would simply crystallize around a more diverse and idiosyncratic variety of attributes. Gentlemen might still prefer blondes, but some of those gentlemen (and some ladies) would prefer blondes of any sex. In the final deconstruction, then, EBE theory reduces to but one ‘essential’ principle: Exotic becomes erotic” (p. 332).

In the end, Bem is so taken by his own radical deconstructionist theory that he sees it as the only “given” in the development of sexual orientation. Nothing else is normal and necessary for healthy psychosexual development. Delighted by the elegance of his model, he concludes:

“That’s it. Everything else is cultural overlay, including the concept of sexual orientation itself.” (p. 331)

Endnotes

{1}Bem, D. Cornell Chronicle, August 29, 1996, p. 8.

{2}King, C. (1945). “The meaning of normal,” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 18, 493-501.

Bibliography

Bell, A., Weinberg, M., Hammersmith, S., (1981). Sexual Preference: Its Development in Men and Women. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, IL.

Bieber, I. et al. (1962). Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals. New York: Basic Books.

Brandtstadter, J. and Bernitzke, F., “The Technique of Path-Analysis: A Contribution to the Problem of Experimental Construction of Causal Models.” Psychologische-Beitrage, 1976, Vol. 18(1), pp. 12-34.

DeLamater, John, “Origins of Sexual Preference,” Book Review in Science, Vol. 215, March 5, 1982, pp. 1229-1230.

Gagnon, John H., “Searching for the Childhood of Eros,” New York Times Book Review, Vol. 86, Dec. 13, 1981, p. 10, 37.

Hatterer, L. (1970). Changing Homosexuality in the Male. New York: McGraw Hill Book Co.

Kronemeyer, R. (1980). Overcoming Homosexuality. New York: MacMillan.

Mayerson, P. and Lief, H. (1965). Psychotherapy of homosexuals: A follow-up study. In Marmor J. (Ed.), Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of Homosexuality. New York: Basic Books.

Reiss, Ira L., “Sex and Gender: Book Review,” Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 11, No. 4, July 1982, pp. 455-456.

Socarides, C.W. (1968). The Overt Homosexual. New York: Grune and Stratton.

van den Aardweg, G. (1985). Homosexuality and Hope: A Psychologist Talks about Treatment and Change. Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Books.

———————(1986). On the Origins and Treatment of Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Reinterpretation. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Zucker, K. J., Bradley, S. J. (1995). Gender Identity Disorder and Psychological Problems in Children and Adolescents. New York: Guilford Press.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D. and Dale O’Leary

This article appeared in 1999 in the NARTH (National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality) Bulletin. It reports on a study published by the American Psychological Association.  Although it is not recent news, the subject remains quite relevant today.

Deconstructionists argue that distinctions between the genders are arbitrary and political. Now, the same argument is being advanced by man-boy love advocates about the distinction between the generations.

An article published last summer in the American Psychological Association’s Psychological Bulletin has drawn a recent firestorm of criticism. Talk show hosts and congressmen are calling for investigations. The outrage has 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.”

The article was entitled “A Meta-analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples.”

APA spokeswoman Rhea Faberman defended publication of the article as part of the scientific work of the organization, saying, “We try to create a lot of dialogue.” She labeled “ridiculous” the claim of radio talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger that publication of the article and the attempt to normalize pedophilia were in any way related.

Contrary to Ms. Faberman’s assertion, however:

1. There is a real and growing movement to legitimize and also legalize sexual relations between boys aged 10 to 16 and adult males;
2. Robert Bauserman, one of the authors of the article, has associated himself with the pedophilia movement through a previous article;
3. The movement’s strategy is to promote the “objective” study of child/adult sex, free of moral considerations;
4. The APA should have known this before they published the article.

Those who are interested in legalizing sexual relations between adults and children want to change the parameters of the discussion from the “absolutist” moral position, to the “relative” position that it can sometimes be beneficial. The A.P.A. article furthered exactly this position.

Deconstructionists have argued–with some success–that distinctions between the genders are arbitrary and politically motivated. Now, the same argument is being advanced about the distinction between the generations.

In a recent lead article of the Journal of Homosexuality (1), for example, Harris Mirkin says the “sexually privileged” have disadvantaged the pedophile through sheer political force in the same way that blacks were disadvantaged by whites before the civil-rights movement.

The Movement to Legitimize Pedophilia

In 1981, Dr. Theo Sandfort, co-director of the research program of the Department of Gay and Lesbian Studies at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, interviewed 25 boys aged 10 to 16 who were currently involved in sexual relationships with adult men. The interviews took place in the homes of the men.

According to Sandfort, “For virtually all the boys … the sexual contact itself was experienced positively…” Could an adult-child sexual contact, then, truly be called positive for the child? Based on the research presented, Sandfort answered that question in the affirmative.

The study was severely criticized by experts in the field of child sexual abuse. Dr. David Mrazek, co-editor of Sexually Abused Children and Their Families, attacked the Sandfort research as unethical, saying:

“In this study, the researchers joined with members of the National Pedophile Workshop to ‘study’ the boys who were the sexual ‘partners’ of its members … there is no evidence that human subject safeguards were a paramount concern. However, there is ample evidence that the study was politically motivated to ‘reform’ legislation.

“These researchers knowingly colluded with the perpetuation of secret illegal activity … In the majority of cases, these boys’ parents were unaware of these sexual activities with adult men, and the researchers contributed to this deception by their action.”

Child sexual-abuse expert Dr. David Finkelhor also criticized the Sandfort research, pointing to the numerous studies which show adult-child sexual contact as a predictor of later depression, suicidal behavior, dissociative disorders, alcohol and drug abuse, and sexual problems.

Dr. Finkelhor strongly defended laws against child/adult sex, saying that many of those now-grown children are very active in lobbying for such protection.

In 1990, the campaign to legalize man-boy sex was furthered by the publication of a two-issue special of the Journal on Homosexuality, reissued as Male Intergenerational Intimacy: Historical, Socio-Psychological, and Legal Perspectives.

This volume provided devastating information on the way psychologically immature pedophile men use vulnerable boys who are starved for adult nurturance and protection.

In the forward, Gunter Schmidt decries discrimination against and persecution of pedophiles, and describes

“successful pedophile relationships which help and encourage the child, even though the child often agrees to sex while really seeking comfort and affection. These are often emotionally deprived, deeply lonely, socially isolated children who seek, as it were, a refuge in an adult’s love and for whom, because of their misery, see it as a stroke of luck to have found such an ‘enormously nurturant relationship’.”

There is another deeply disturbing article in the volume, revealingly titled, “The Main Thing is Being Wanted: Some Case Studies on Adult Sexual Experiences with Children.” In it, pedophiles reveal their need to find a child who will satisfy their desire for uncritical affirmation and a lost youth. One of the men justifies his activity as a search for love, and complains that: “Although I’ve had physical relationships with probably, I don’t know, maybe a hundred or more boys over the years, I can only point to four or five true relationships over that time.”

The volume also contains an introductory article which decries society’s anti-pedophile sentiment. The authors complain about the difficulty studying man-boy relationships in “an objective way,” and they hope the social sciences will adopt a broader approach which could lead to understanding of the “diversity and possible benefits of intergenerational intimacy.”

Bauserman Defends Sandfort’s Research

The same volume contains an article by Robert Bauserman-co-author of the A.P.A. study–which complains that objective research is impossible in a social climate that condemns man-boy sexual relationships. Bauserman decries the prevailing ideology that labels all boys as “victims” and all adult pedophiles as “perpetrators.” He attacks researchers Mzarek and Finkelhor as being driven by a “particular set of beliefs about adult-juvenile sex.” Bauserman looks for a new “scientific objectivity,” with the explicit call for research that will challenge the social-moral taboo against adult/child sex. The meta-analysis which he co-authored, and which the American Psychological Association published, can be seen as Bauserman’s follow-up to his Journal of Homosexuality article.

More Recent Defenses of Pedophilia

Harris Mirkin recently wrote a lead article in the Journal of Homosexuality entitled “The Pattern of Sexual Politics: Feminism, Homosexuality and Pedophilia.” Using social-constructionist theory, he argues that the concept of child molestation is a “culture- and class-specific creation” which can and should be changed.

He likens the battle for the legalization of pedophilia to the battles for women’s rights, homosexual rights, and even the civil rights of blacks.

He sees the hoped-for shift as taking place in two stages. During the first stage, the opponents of pedophilia control the debate by insisting that the issue is non-negotiable–while using psychological and moral categories to silence all discussion.

But in the second stage, Mirkin says, the discussion must move on to such issues as the “right” of children to have and enjoy sex.

If this paradigm shift could be accomplished, the issue would move from the moral to the political arena, and therefore become open to negotiation. For example, rather than decrying sexual abuse, lawmakers would be forced to argue about when and under what conditions adult/child sex could be accepted. Once the issues becomes “discussible,” it would only be a matter of time before the public would begin to view pedophilia as another sexual orientation, and not a choice for the pedophile.

The response to the APA article shows that for the present, social opposition to pedophilia continues to be strong. Finkelhor’s response to Bauserman, which was included in Male Intergenerational Intimacy, explains why:

“Some types of social relationships violate deeply held values and principles in our culture about equality and self-determination. Sex between adults and children is one of them. Evidence that certain children have positive experiences does not challenge these values, which have deep roots in our worldview.”

To pedophile advocates, any discussion of the benefits of child-adult sex is a victory. The APA should have understood this, should have known about Bauserman’s connections, and should have been well aware of–and vocally resistent to–the growing movement to legalize pedophilia.

Endnote

Mirkin, Harris, “The Pattern of Sexual Politics: Feminism, Homosexuality and Pedophilia,” Journal of Homosexuality vol. 37(2), 1999, p. 1-24.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D. and Linda Ames Nicolosi

A February 2001 article published in The American Psychologist critiqued the traditionalist view of the man as head of the household and family protector. NARTH President Joseph Nicolosi and his wife, Linda Ames Nicolosi, submitted the following Commentary to the journal:

In your lead article of the last issue of the American Psychologist (1), the authors criticize the “benevolent sexism” and “chivalrous ideology” in a marriage where the husband serves as the protector and provider.

Given that the authors’ radical feminist view is at odds with a significant portion of American society, it is surprising indeed that there is so little resistance to it in the pages of this journal. We see little objection–in this journal or others–to the relentless deconstruction of the traditional family, and to the related assumption that children do just as well, if not better, in nontraditional families.

Perhaps this view is so prevalent in intellectual circles because we Americans love democracy so much–along with its cherished individualism and equality–that we easily tend to slip down the slippery slope into radical egalitarianism. Radical egalitarianism, some philosophers have noted, leads to a denial of the foundational social distinctions of gender, generation, and hierarchy.(2)

But when gender distinctions are denied, and the subtle, hierarchical distinctions of traditional marriage are deemed merely laughable, there is reason for concern for the continuation of the foundational institution of marriage, upon which democracy itself depends.

As Stanley Kurtz of the Hudson Institute has noted, (3) the success of marriage actually seems to depend on gender distinctions–particularly, the innate complementarity of the sexes, although “even to mention it [complementarity] these days is to invite ridicule.” Male-female physical and emotional complementarity is, Kurtz astutely observes, biologically-based and thus “not about to disappear.” Women help to domesticate the man’s typically more aggressive, sexual and risk-taking nature.

Innate gender differences may help to explain why gay male relationships, for example, in contrast to heterosexual marriage, characteristically turn out to be “open,” while lesbian relationships are more often socially exclusive and tend to be possessive. Neither of the latter two types of relationships possesses the strength inherent in gender complementarity.

Does a man’s protectiveness toward his family translate into anything like “sexism,” or worse, a form of despotism? Perhaps quite the opposite; in fact, one very important factor that works in favor of marriage, as Kurtz notes, is a man’s sense that his home is his “castle” and he its “king.” Even so, the reality, he observes, is that “a rough sort of equality” has always lain hidden in the reality of a husband-wife relationship. But still, “what the Promise Keepers has the audacity to say out loud about a man’s authority within the marriage bond remains, in subtler form, the formula of heterosexual marital success.”

While the authors of the American Psychologist article would obliterate gender distinctions, the distinction between the generations is now also slowly deteriorating. Thus we now see arguments being made in favor of “intergenerational intimacy”–a euphemism for man-boy sex–which are published in the Journal of Homosexuality. That journal has argued that children are an oppressed minority who possess a natural right to their sexual autonomy.

The next frontier is the obliteration of the distinction between the species–a project of the animal-rights movement and of those who question whether human life is indeed any more sacred than that of animals.

Where, we are asking, is the intellectual resistance to these movements? Other than within journals of religion and public policy like First Things and Commentary, its intellectual opponents have largely fallen silent.

Some of this silence can be attributed to the powerful “censoring role” of the media which prefers to promote its favorite causes; some, we believe, to the fact that a small group of deeply committed idealogues (particularly, radical feminists and gay activists) can impose social and career costs on their adversaries.

“But one also senses,” says Kurtz (and we agree), “that the silencing of the majority would never have been possible were the majority itself more certain of its ground.”

Endnotes

(1) “An Ambivalent Alliance: Hostile and Benevolent Sexism as Complementary Justifications for Gender Inequality,” The American Psychologist, February 2001, p. 3.

(2) Weaver, Richard, Ideas Have Consequences. Chicago, Ill.: U. of Chicago Press, 1948.

(3) Kurtz, Stanley, “What is Wrong with Gay Marriage,” Commentary, September 2000, pp. 35-41.