Experts Split Over 'Bizarre' Sexual Orientation Therapy Techniques

Agape Press ^ | June 20, 2006 | Jim Brown

[randog]

Kinda like one witch doctor telling the other his voodoo is bad joojoo.

[Southack]

It's a choice, it's not genetic.

Send 1,000 straight guys to prison for long enough and you'll see. The reverse is the same, too.

[evets]

Nuthin' a good 'lap pillow' won't fix...

[twigs]

I knew a Christian therapist who was involved with similar issues. I can't imagine him doing such things, although his methods were controversial as well. IIRC, he used pornography to re-orient homosexual men to being attracted to women. I didn't really understand his using that, but at least I understood the logic. I don't with Cohen's methods.

[Personal Responsibility]

I cannot wait to see this taught as standard cirriculum in the public schools. Also, I am sure this will be the cover of Time, Newsweek, the LA and NY Times etc...

Whats that I hear? Crickets?

[Personal Responsibility]

One problem with reparative or change therapy practices, Throckmorton explains, is that "there are very few guidelines for therapists working in this area."

The other problem is that it goes against liberal orthodoxy that gays are born that way.

[Abathar]

I have a gay friend that finally came out of the closet not long ago, and I've know him since high school. He told a mutual friend who knows him better that he has never been with a woman, he is 43 now. I just can't figure that out, how does he know he is happy if he never had the Real McCoy to compare it to? I truly think it was a decision he made because he wasn't very good at meeting girls, I remember him getting drunk and chasing everything with a skirt a couple of times. I guess he just decided to be gay so at least someone would be with him, I wonder how many other gays start out like that...

[DBeers]

I knew a Christian therapist who was involved with similar issues. I can't imagine him doing such things, although his methods were controversial as well. IIRC, he used pornography to re-orient homosexual men to being attracted to women. I didn't really understand his using that, but at least I understood the logic. I don't with Cohen's methods.

I am not familiar with any specific methodologies; although, it is my understanding that in general some of the therapy involves behavior modification e.g. changing or breaking habits and adopting new habits much like Pavlov did with dogs by ringing bells and associating the ringing with feeding times until he had conditioned the dogs to salivate whenever he rang the bells...

The main reason this and any potential homosexual disorder treatment or therapy is controversial is because it deals with a controversial subject that became politicized when the APA without scientific basis declared the homosexual disorder normal...

Exposed: The Myth That Psychiatry Has Proven That Homosexual Behavior Is Normal.

EXCERPT:
In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed homosexuality as a mental disorder from the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders (DSM-II).

This decision was a significant victory for homosexual activists, and they have continued to claim that the APA based their decision on new scientific discoveries that proved that homosexual behavior is normal and should be affirmed in our culture.

This is false and part of numerous homosexual urban legends that have infiltrated every aspect of our culture. The removal of homosexuality as a mental disorder has given homosexual activists credibility in the culture, and they have demanded that their sexual behavior be affirmed in society.

What Really Happened?

Numerous psychiatrists over the past decades have described what forces were really at work both inside and outside of the American Psychiatric Association-and what led to the removal of homosexuality as a mental disorder.

[Jaysun]

".....who very often were "touch deprived" as children."

Many of them weren't "touch deprived" at all, they were molested.

[cvq3842]

I do understand that that was a watershed moment.

[raybbr]

Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX)

Boy, did they get that wrong. It should be:

PFEGG.

[DBeers]

I do understand that that was a watershed moment.

Some would assert it was precipitated by many water closet moments...

[Casie]

I'm not sure. I have a cousin that is gay. He has no interest at all in flaunting his sexual preference, and chooses instead to be very discrete.

As children we used to spend summers together and as early as age 6 he showed more interest in my toys than his own. He liked my pink bike better than his blue. He once stole and hid one of my dolls.

Growing up his father was constantly encouraging him to play every team sport he could arrange. Once in a football game I went to, he got hit very hard but instead of getting riled up to play more, he sobbed quietly.

In his last years of HS his dad even sent him to a tough military style school "for his own good".

He may never be a rough car-fixin, gun-toting kind of family man. But he IS an intelligent, thoughtful, talented, organized, successful and beautiful person all the same.

I believe in my heart he was born gay. And I know for sure in his case it wasn't his choice, or some abuse or neglect from his family.

Its a tricky topic. And I think decent people like him sometimes get unfairly lumped into the same category with those sick and perverted homosexual child molesters and others that do harm.

[DBeers]

I believe in my heart he was born gay.

And I think decent people like him sometimes get unfairly lumped into the same category with those sick and perverted homosexual child molesters and others that do harm.

I agree -there are NO legitimate stereotypes. The ONLY differentiating 'thing' is sexual activity whether it be sexual activity one feels predisposed toward and or sexual activity one chooses to engage in...

As such it would seem more accurate to state he was born predisposed toward homosexual activity...

[hinckley buzzard]

The basic concept is sound, although the "holding" intervention as described needs to be handled with caution. Here's why: The thing most missing in the developmental history of the male homosexual is the formation of strong non-erotic attachments with other males. It includes fathers, buddies (or "chums" as Harry Stack Sullivan called them in his prescient work several generations ago), mentors, just what the doctor is talking about. Provision of non-erotic physical contact for a homosexual may be a potent curative experience-- but context is everything, and boundaries make all the difference.

This approach to reparative therapy is worth being tested, developed, and refined, despite the hate-mongering bigotry and hostility of the pro-homosexual lobby.

[toddlintown]

Yeah, OK. what ever you say.

[DBeers]

As children we used to spend summers together and as early as age 6 he showed more interest in my toys than his own. He liked my pink bike better than his blue. He once stole and hid one of my dolls.

Growing up his father was constantly encouraging him to play every team sport he could arrange. Once in a football game I went to, he got hit very hard but instead of getting riled up to play more, he sobbed quietly.

In his last years of HS his dad even sent him to a tough military style school "for his own good".

After rereading this it is my opinion that he was stereotyped from an early age... He may have just been a sensitive kid that enjoyed things not typically "macho"... He needed male love and acceptance from his father not male rejection. As such, he may be "gay" only because he sought and now seeks the love and acceptance he did not get in his childhood --- Just my armchair opinion...

[GovernmentShrinker]

Cohen, a former homosexual . . . he demonstrated a technique that involves cuddling a male client in his lap.

SUUURRRRRE he's a "former" homosexual. This guy is heading in the same direction as every other "formerly homosexual" Christian "change therapy" peddler I've ever heard of. They all keep up the charade for a while, and then fall off the wagon and take up with a new male lover (or two, or three, or . . . ), sometimes dumping their therapeutic wives in the process. Earth to straight women: There is no such thing as a former homosexual man, so don't let yourself get suckered into believing you're marrying one.

[GovernmentShrinker]

You are completely correct.