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What is reparative therapy?

Discussion in 'Sexual Orientation' started by Jackie13, Jun 15, 2016.

  1. Jackie13

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    Wasn't exactly sure where to post this, but since reparative therapy has to do with trying to change your orientation, I just decided to put it here. I was just wanting to know what reparative therapy is: why it is tried, what is done, what techniques are used, why has it been discredited, etc.

    I'd also like to here some personal experiences, if anyone has experienced reparative therapy. What effect did it have on you, if any? Why did you go that route in the first place?
     
  2. Lance

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    Well first and foremost, reparative therapy does not work. Sexual orientation cannot be changed. Even the leader of a large reparative therapy organization in the United States, Exodus, said that it does not work at all. It is mostly used by religious people, either parents forcing their children to go or adults who go willingly. I'm not completely sure what all is done, but I have read in the past that it was/is very damaging for the people who partake in it.

    Nobody that goes through it will ever be changed to straight. It is just not possible. Individuals that do claim to be changed are just suppressing their true self and lying to themselves and everyone around them. It's so much easier and worthwhile to live authentically and happily as we were meant to.
     
  3. biAnnika

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    Check out Peterson Toscano's excellent show/ about his personal experience with reparative therapy. You'll get the idea...and it's fun, funny, smart, poignant, and did I mention fun?
     
  4. Glowing Eyes

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    It's not really therapy 'cause therapy is supposed to help and support the client not tell get them to force themselves deny a part of themselves.
     
  5. thinkreal93

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    It basically wants to convince you that you're attracted to guys because you have unfulfilled needs of identification, approval, attention or acceptance from other guys. It will make you think you have such emotional needs. It makes use of your non conformity & insecurities to push their theories. Needless to say, it's a lie, atleast for the most part.
    It's all based on psychoanalysis. With that, they want to pathologize homosexuality. The interesting thing is, the same theory can be applied to why people have heterosexual feelings, and thus the same model should pathologize heterosexuality. I posed this question to Joseph Nicolosi, the guy who came up with this modern reparative therapy. The guy refuses to see heterosexuality that way. Clearly, he is biased with religious beliefs. His interest is only in corrupting homosexual feelings with more insecurities, depression, feeling of being broken inside and dismantling those feelings to make his patients vulnerable & therefore easier to further his cause by encouraging heterosexuality.

    Of course, he doesn't care how many lives he destroys with his false & unscientific theories. As long as some people are able to brainwash themselves with his theories, that's enough for him to present as evidence for his success.
     
  6. Tomás1

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    Thinkreal, you are extreme in your characterization on Joseph Nicolosi. There may be a grain of truth in what you say, but you have exaggerated it.
     
  7. thinkreal93

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    How have I have exaggerated it ? In what manner ? He came up with this theory with an obviously discriminatory approach. Although he may have "good" intentions for his clients (or I should more accurately say, what he THINKS as good), he wants to stand with his therapy which is essentially brainwashing. You know, a trained psychologist can use the same psychoanalytic concept on straight people, and convince them that they have developmental & emotional needs, that they are attracted to the opposite sex because they're broken & incomplete inside.

    Please explain to me how I'm exaggerating.
     
  8. Tomás1

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    Thinkreal93: you are pretty familiar w Reparative Therapy & its main proponent, Joseph Nicolosi. I did some phone sessions w Nicolosi around 10 years ago. I began to realize that it didn't work.

    It sounds like you had a bad experience with it. Can you say more, about your own experience?
     
  9. thinkreal93

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    I didn't have any sit-down one-on-one sessions with Nicolosi or any other reparative therapist. So I've never really tried it.

    However, the things that concept made me go through in my head were more than enough to put me in mental anguish. When I heard of it, I tried to be open to the idea of that theory being valid. Sometimes it made sense & put in me real feelings that I was actually broken inside, in need of male approval/acceptance/attention/affection. I could see (or I should say, tricked into seeing) that I longed for male bonding. Other times, it didn't make any sense. If I was in fact broken, then it should have translated into sexual desire/feeling as the theory suggests. What I've always felt for guys can definitely not be reverse-tracked to such developmental needs. It's a healthy & positive feeling, not a compensatory feeling intended to fill a void. The reparative therapy concept tricked me into seeing it as a compensatory feeling. That was until I came to my senses & ditched the whole thing. Even now, I am affected by those thoughts of possibly having developmental needs. It's completely unnecessary mental anguish, pushed forward by people who base their agenda on personal & religious beliefs.
    It makes me say, 'How am I exaggerating with what I said?'
     
  10. PatrickUK

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    There are many different techniques, but they all amount to the same thing - 'quackery'. Some techniques are simply farcical, while others are incredibly manipulative and dangerous; so much so that I'd rather not post about them on this forum in any detail. Suffice to say they have lead some LGBT people to a very dark place with suicidal thoughts.

    Reparative 'therapy' is tried by people who have insidious or religious motives and it's discredited because it doesn't work and can do more serious harm to mental wellbeing. Moreover, it's discredited because all reputable practitioners in the field of mental health medicine and therapy do not recognise same sex orientation as a mental illness that requires a "cure".
     
  11. Tomás1

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    thinkreal93: there is a grain of truth in Nicolosi's point of view, just as there is in yours. For instance, research has shown that it's more likely that a man will be gay if he has a weak father, or no good active paternal role model present. This is one of Nicolosi's foundations.

    I have found no evidence that Nicolosi is a fundamentalist conservative Christian. His teachings have been used by fundamental Christians, Mormons, etc, to justify their own beliefs.

    If you look at the massive hookup scene in the gay male community, repeated & frequent anonymous sex … it's obvious that there are deep unmet emotional needs.

    You imply several times that RP tricked you into the theory of attraction to men being a compensatory feelings to fill the void. Where do feelings of affection come from? Many sources, including things that happened to us when young … or compensatory. Our world is rife with attempts to fill the void: sex, drugs, alcohol, the Internet, all material things. When you look deeply, the void is something we all experience.

    Plz don't take the above as a defense of RP! It doesn't work & has been discredited! An old adage comes to mind "Don't throw the baby out w the bath water". Male/male friendships are not based on sex, tho they can include sex. However if you follow the EC thread on "Male Friendships" on LGBT Later In Life, you will see responses from gay men indicating strong authentic friendships w straight men, yet difficulty in good friendships w gay men (w exceptions), due to the hookup culture, & values placed on other men due to their desirability, looks, physique, age, etc. Whah do you thinks going on there?
     
    #11 Tomás1, Jun 17, 2016
    Last edited: Jun 17, 2016
  12. Katchoo

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    I need to come back and post on this thread after I sleep so I can hit it fresh.

    Basically, I was involved over time with several different "ex gay" ministries, though none of them really liked that label. None of the places I was (voluntarily) with said that their goal was to change orientation, because they typically had enough sense to know that was rare to impossible. But, we were pretty familiar with the NARTH type stuff, and the places I was with all subscribed to that Freudian origins of homosexuality story, like, distant relationship with your same sex parents, blah blah blah.

    Anyway, those are some starter facts. Hopefully I can come back with opinions when I am rested.
     
    #12 Katchoo, Jun 18, 2016
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  13. thinkreal93

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    I'm not denying that his theory can be held true for some people. I can see how it is possible for men being attracted to men due to unmet needs. You said from research, a man is more likely to be gay due to absent father or male role model. First thing, many many straight guys grow up in the same environment. Association doesn't mean a cause. It could well be an effect rather than cause. Second thing, there are gay men also who did not have an absent father or male role model.

    Nicolosi is a conservative Christian. I don't understand how that can be denied. Why else would he focus his career totally (or almost totally, Idk) on coming up with a therapy for homosexuals that contains so many limitations & potential risks? I can agree that initially, he may not have had such strong stances. He had said in his book that only certain homosexuals are 'non-gay'.They engage in homosexual acts due to unmet needs. Now, the guy thinks ALL of homosexuality is due to unmet needs. He said this to me in email when I raised this point. He's definitely religiously motivated. If he wasn't, he would have emphasized the problems with his theory as much as he advertises it's success.

    Don't you think that's more a problem of addiction or something that maintains identity affirmation??


    Isn't that normal ? If you see someone romantically/sexually, of course it's less likely to be in good friendship with them. This happens with straight guy - straight girl friendship too !
     
  14. Tomás1

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    thinkreal93:
    I was not aware that Nicolosi is a conservative Christian, as I'd never heard or seen that before. However, you could be right. I know that RP was embraced by the Jewish group JONAS, which was sued in the last year in NY or NJ, as part of the ongoing legal process to discredit RP.

    As to his theories, I think there is some truth in them, especially the absent father stuff - also cited by Freud - not to enthrone Freud, but Freud is generally recognized as the founder of therapy.

    A somewhat accepted research model of family dynamics of a gay boy is a weak father, an overly dominant mother, where she has an overly close relationship w the boy, who replaces the father as her main relationship. There are exceptions, there are boys who have similar family dynamics, and are straight … so it's not causal, but a factor.

    As to the anonymous gay hookup culture, I think addiction & identity affirmation are secondary causes & not primary. Primary causes are unmet needs from childhood, lack of depth, fear of loneliness, shame & low self esteem.

    I disagree w your last comment heterosexual relationships do not contain friendship. In monogamous heterosexual relationships, there's a lot of romance going on … which can continue for years. That generally is not characteristic of gay relationships, altho there may be some in the beginning, & there are exceptions. Long term gay couples almost always have open relationships, which indicates the absence of romance. As a bisexual I've noticed this in spades. There's wooing of a woman, dating, kissing, a buildup to sex (w exceptions). W men, it's often sex the first & only time you're together (w exceptions).

    I was in an awesomely loving & romantic gay relationship about 20 yrs ago. We saw each other once every week or 10 days, for 4 months, wo sex … because I was married, he lived w his lover, & we had no place to be private. Each of us loved the affection that was developing, & were content w it.
     
    #14 Tomás1, Jun 18, 2016
    Last edited: Jun 18, 2016
  15. thinkreal93

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    I understand that said family dynamic may play as a factor. Can it then be vouched that, in every gay man with a history of similar family dynamic, his homosexuality is due to such issues ?? I'm inclined to not believe so.

    Regarding anonymous hook ups, the primary causes you mentioned above.. Could you explain how shame contributes to it ? And you really think these are the reasons of hooking up ? How so ? The times I have hooked up with people, I cannot recall any need other than being horny.

    As to last topic, I wasn't talking about relationships. I was talking about general interaction. When you said gay men find it difficult to build a friendship with other gay men, I was pointing out that's because of potential sexual & romantic tension between the gay men, similar to what you see between straight male & female friends.

    That may be due to greater importance given to sex, and more carefree nature (no commitment).
     
  16. thinkreal93

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    Freud is also known to have said that he didn't consider the homosexual condition as a pathology ; rather, a different form of development course.
    And does Nicolosi pay heed to that ? Why would he ?!
     
  17. Tomás1

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    Shame or internalized homophobia is an underlying cause of hookups, because when you're gay, & you feel bad about being gay … it's only human to look for support, affirmation & validation of yourself. This is easy to find - momentarily - in hooking up w someone you're attracted to, or comes on to you.

    thinkreal93 when you say you hookup because you're horny … well yes, I get that. But look deeper. What is horniness all about? Aren't there aspects of loneliness, isolation, the top/bttm dom/sub dynamics at play?

    For example, I've had many hookups, more recently in the context of finding a fwb. A few nights ago, I was on a hookup site, & a guy started messaging me. We exchanged 30-40 msg, me in the dom, & him as sub. After it was over, I felt hugh shame, embarrassment, guilt, etc … that I had wasted my seed, engaged in role dynamics where he sucked power from me, & I affirmed his sub role which is contrary to healthy psychology (sub is a learned maladaptive behavior). One part of my identity is a sex addict.

    Things I notice about my sex addict:
    - he always meets sub guys he'd never want to have a relationship w
    - he only values the sexual gratification the other man provides
    - per the addictive cycle, he dominates my psyche until his needs are met
    - Having a sex addiction limits access to deeper layers of my soul
     
    #17 Tomás1, Jun 18, 2016
    Last edited: Jun 18, 2016
  18. thinkreal93

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    Well, I can't pinpoint any such association other than the fun. Although I do enjoy the dom/sub aspect, I can't see it as the primary reason for engaging in it. Nor can I see shame or loneliness or isolation or unmet needs from childhood as reasons.
    By the way, how is being submissive a maladaptive behaviour ? Some people might indulge in it to achieve something but a whole lot of others just enjoy it without there being any specific reason.
     
  19. Katchoo

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    Hey, friends. I'm back.

    I'm mostly framing this post in terms of my own experience with Christian ministries.

    My experience, basic facts: waaaaay back when Ifirst was coming out to myself, I went to a Truth Wins Out event. For about 5 years I was involved with a primarily online ministry (part of why I still like forums as a place for journaling and processing), I went to their annual weekend retreat 5 times, and I went to the Exodus conference twice (Once in North Carolina and once in Minnesota). I purchased MP3s of LOTS of other Exodus conference audio, and I listened to it a TON. I had one phone conversation with a therapist who referred me out becauseher caseload was full, and I had some skype sessions and involved in a "secret" facebook group with a lady from a different ministry. And did some group work and some individual sessions with another group in Georgia. I read several books, which were of varying quality. I also had several mentorship relationships, pastors, friends, etc through local churches who were supporting me in living celebately and of "working through my SSA" (same sex attraction). For this topic but mostly for other topics, I participated in "prayer counseling" with I think 4 different people or pairs of people. I generally hated prayer counseling but really wanted my life to quit sucking.

    Note: Other than some you tube videos, non of my experience was with Niccolosi or a direct NARTH affiliate or by anyone claiming to practice repairative therapy. Almost everyone I knew or worked with said that change of orientation was not the goal, that "holiness" and that discipleship with Jesus were the goal. But, there were lots of people who were NARTH influenced, and even if "change" wasn't held up as the goal, people got really excited when someone in the group managed to date someone of the opposite sex (even if it was an unmitigated disaster) and those people who actually got married were held up with great admiration. Generally, ministiry leadership could acknowledge the problematic nature of saying it was not about "change" yet holding up opposite sex couples as good examples, and they had articulate conversations about that. Ithink they intelectually did not want it to be about "change" but seeing a cute, straight-looking couple was just too tempting an opportunity to pass up.

    To me, the main thing that I experienced as damaging was constantly pathologizing my attractions. It was good that no one made me feel like Iwas going to hell or that Jesus wouldn't love me if Istill thought ladies were pretty, so there wasn't pressure to change my attractions in order to make Jesus happy. But, there was a lot of emphasis on these freudian psychosocial models of where same sex attractions come from in men and in women, which made it sound like Iwas broken and sick. In fact, the phrase "sexually and relationally broken" got passed around a lot as a label, and people really strongly identified as being "broken". It was almost like the more "broken" you realized you were, the better you were loving Jesus. The other side of the psychanalytic, pathologized model was the implication that if it were broken, and you could figure out exactly what got you broke, you might could fix it. That would be the "repairative" in repairative therapy, trying to have "corrective" experiences. But, yeah, pathologizing was bad. Some individuals also participated in 12 step groups like celebrate recovery or homosexuals anonymous, and that kind of "support" was encouraged if it was available. Like, people were comparing their gayness to sex addiction, even if it were just regular gayness.

    Related problem. MInistry leadership, books, etc had a problem with masturbation. There's that Bible passage where Jesus talks about the dangers of lust and then immediately says if your eye makes you sin pluck it out and if your right hand makes you send chop it off. Thankfully no one at these ministries was at the same level of Jesus for advocating body modification to sin proof yourself. But..... How do you lust with your right hand??? Yeah, they would say that Jesus is saying stop that. Also, in their "where does homosexuality come from"explainations, they would say that if early on you masturbate while thinking of someone of the same sex, every orgasm programs more and more in your brain tthat you are sexually attracted to that person. So, there was an iddea that if you kep masturbating, you would keep stirring up your attraction, but if you could stop that, the attractions would get weaker, like a leg in a cast kind of attrophies over time even if your leg never just disappears. Yeah, this had all sorts of problems. People talked about masturbation like an addiction. Counting how many days you have gone without it, feeling really guilty when they "fell". Of course, gay porn was also a big no no. I will say, I was never involved with anywhere that advocating "reprogramming" yourself my trying to masturbate about opposite sex people or by rubbing one out to straight porn, though I'm sure most of the participants tried that on their own, lol. But, yeah. Telling people to be so celebate that they could never even touch themselves bas basically a big recipie for shame and self hatred and crankiness and depression, and blue balls/blue vulvas.

    I appreciated that the online ministry actually was supportive of getting appropriate treatment for things like trauma or bipolar disorder or using antidepressants or whatever was needed. They did not seem to understand how supressing your sexuality exacerbates other mental health conditions, though.

    In retrospect, one of the big problems in these ministires and churches in my experience was bisexual erassure. First, for some reason, it was seen as kind of bad to "identify" with terms like gay or lesbian. Most people said things like "I experience same sex attraction" instead. I still don't really understand the logic there, but Iknow Ifelt more comfortable with that distancing language at the time. But, not using good labels for anything meant that either people experience SSA or not, or they experience OSA or not. So, people could get held up as ""hope" if they eventually married an opposite sex partner. LIke, woohoo, you made it! But, the possibility of that person being bi was never brought up. Like, one of the ministry leaders, he was coming out to himself in the 70s, and that whole era had trouble acknowledging that being bi was a thing. He married a woman who Ithink he really has been in love with and happy with for decades. He did not try to say that was for everyone, but it was inferred by hopeful participants who hated themselves and their sexuality. But, the possibility that he was Bi or homofexible or whatever never came up.He acknowledged that he was still attracted to guys sometimes, sometimes a lot, and that was fine. Now, Iknew some other people who got married to an opposite sex person, and anyone with eyes could tell you he is miserable and not straight. His marriage was much less.... inspiring. But, yeah, I think that the "oh wow Icould do this"examples were probably bisexual people who just didn't identify as bi, which could go on forever because no one identified with any labels that were actually useful.

    Oh, there was one lady who didn't erase bisexuality and actually stated that she "struggled" more with bisexuality than lesbianism in her own story. She also is one of the people from all this that I admire the most. She was the therapist whose schedule was too full. She has some clients about this topic, but most of her clients have just regular problems not related to LGBTness, like, anxiety or whatever. That lady definitely had a lot of strengths, including that she tended to be client centered about things, more focused on helping the client find a way to reconcile faith and sexuality rather than every 10 seconds totally telling them what they "should" do cuz "Bible".

    Ok, I need a break from this mega post. Get some breakfast. Hopefully I'll ramble more at you later in the day.
     
  20. brainwashed

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    Hey the word brainwash, right on. I had a hard time selecting an alias for ECs. I came up with Brainwashed. Now that I've interacted with ECs for some time, I couldn't have picked a better alias. It fits me very well.

    It must be noted, I did not go through reparative therapy. At 14-16 great shame was applied to me, causing me to never develop my innate sexuality.

    Post 16 current societal view about homosexuality kept me from moving on.
     
    #20 brainwashed, Jun 19, 2016
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