he Psychological Profession and Homosexuality: Lunatics Running the Asylum?

The Psychological Profession and Homosexuality: Lunatics Running the Asylum?

Special Report Commentary by

Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

WASHINGTON, August 14, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A man goes to a psychologist with a problem. "Doctor," he says, "I'm suffering terribly. I feel like a woman trapped inside the body of a man. I want to become a woman."

The psychologist responds: "No problem. We can discuss this idea for a couple of years, and if you're still sure you want to be a woman, we can have a surgeon remove your penis, give you hormones for breast enlargement and make other changes to your body. Problem solved."

Gratified, the first patient leaves, followed by a second. "Doctor," he says, "I feel terrible. I'm a man but I feel attracted to other men. I want to change my sexual preference. I want to become heterosexual." The psychologist responds: "Oh no, absolutely not! That would be unethical. Sexual orientation is an immutable characteristic!"

The irony of this little tale is that, while reading like a joke, it is in reality an accurate description of the mental health professions today. While dismissing and condemning reparative therapy for homosexual orientation, the majority of psychiatrists and psychologists in Anglophone North America have embraced the concept of "sex change," a procedure that does nothing more than mutilate the patient to appease his confused mind.

The American Psychological Association Perpetuates the Madness

In its most recent statement on the topic, the American Psychological Association (APA) has softened its tone somewhat against psychologists who do reorientation therapy for homosexuals. However it maintains that, "Contrary to claims of sexual orientation change advocates and practitioners, there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation".

The refusal of the organization to accept the increasingly strong evidence against its position is another reminder of how entrenched the sophistry of sexual hedonism has become among the leaders of the organization.

In recent years, a number of studies have been published in peer-reviewed psychology journals, indicating that significant numbers of patients who voluntarily participate in therapy to change their sexual orientation are successful and happy with the results. Combined with numerous individual testimonies by former homosexuals, evidence in favor of the practice is overwhelming.

However, in its new report, "Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation," the APA's leadership declares that all of those studies can be dismissed because, in its words, "None of the recent research (1999-2007) meets methodological standards that permit conclusions regarding efficacy or safety."

The report therefore conveniently disposes of the most recent studies on the topic -- the ones that undermine the APA's position. The only studies that remain are ones done before the resurgence of the reparative therapy movement, in the 1970s, when the APA declared that homosexual orientation and sodomy really weren't unhealthy after all. New research is rejected in favor of research that is now over 30 years old, applied to therapeutic practices that may no longer be in use.

However, the authors of Essential Psychotherapy and its Treatment, a standard text in medical schools, disagree with the APA's leadership, and say that the newer studies vindicate sexual reorientation therapy.

The newest edition (2009) notes on page 488 that, "While many mental health care providers and professional associations have expressed considerable skepticism that sexual orientation could be changed with psychotherapy and also assumed that therapeutic attempts at reorientation would produce harm, recent empirical evidence demonstrates that homosexual orientation can indeed be therapeutically changed in motivated clients, and that reorientation therapies do not produce emotional harm when attempted (e.g., Byrd & Nicolosi, 2002; Byrd et al., 2008; Shaeffer et al., 1999; Spitzer, 2003)."

The APA's latest report, done by a task force composed of psychologists with long records of homosexualist activism, also claims as "scientific facts" that "same-sex sexual attractions, behavior, and orientations per se are normal and positive variants of human sexuality-in other words, they are not indicators of mental or developmental disorders" and "no empirical studies or peer-reviewed research supports theories attributing same-sex sexual orientation to family dysfunction or trauma."

These unbelievable statements fly in the face of more than a century of scientific, peer-reviewed studies and clinical observation that indicate that much homosexual behavior originates in deficient family relationships and is associated with a wide range of diseases and pathological behaviors.

Studies have shown that homosexuals disproportionately come from families in which sons or daughters lack a healthy relationship with one or both of their parents, or in situations in which the homosexual was the victim of child sex abuse by a same-sex adult.

Homosexual behavior is also statistically associated with a host of diseases, disorders, and pathological behaviors, including venereal and other diseases, promiscuity and unstable relationships, anxiety disorders, depression and suicide,alcoholism and drug abuse, domestic violence, pederasty, and early death.

Even the homosexual Gay and Lesbian Medical Association admits that homosexuals suffer disproportionate rates of disease andself-destructive behavior.

Although the homosexualist leadership at the APA tries to rationalize these relationships by claiming that they are caused by social stigma or other factors, their claims ring hollow. Many stigmitized groups exist in society that display none of the pathological tendencies of homosexuals, and these tendencies appear even in countries that are very tolerant of homosexual behavior, such as the Netherlands.

Homosexualism on the Defensive

The very existence of the report, however, is evidence that the homosexualist establishment currently in power at the APA is on the defensive, and seeking to preserve its ideology of sexual permissiveness as a paradigm in the psychology profession.

After surrendering itself to a hedonistic ethos in the 1970s and 80s, the American psychological practice has been transformed into a vehicle for patients to rationalize and reconcile themselves with self-destructive, irrational, and narcissistic behavior, paying an "expert" to soothe their consciences by assuring them that "science" is on their side.

However, an increasing number of mental health professionals whose institutions were stolen from them by political activists in the 1970s are now rising up to take back their profession in the name of true science, and patient health.

Former APA President Dr. Robert Perloff has publicly endorsed the National Organization for the Research and Treatment of Homosexuality (NARTH), the largest American organization devoted the treatment of unwanted homosexual attractions, and has denounced the APA's campaign against such treatment.

"The ideology of those who oppose efforts to try to facilitate transfers from SSA, that is, Same Sex Attraction, to heterosexual attraction, must not, must not stand in the way of those homosexual persons who desire to live their lives heterosexually, a choice which is unarguably theirs to make," he said in a videotaped statement played at NARTH's 2008 annual meeting.

Dr. Robert Spitzer, who has been been called the "architect" of the American Psychiatric Association's normalization of homosexuality in the 1970s, provoked outrage from the homosexualist establishment when he admitted in 2001 that his own investigations had convinced him that sexual reorientation therapy can work.

His study, published in the peer-reviewed Archives of Mental Health in 2003, found that a majority of his sample of 247 people had developed heterosexual urges or had ceased to be predominantly homosexual after only one year of therapy. None of the subjects said that they had been harmed in the process.

After presenting his paper before the American Psychiatric Association in 2001, Spitzer said: "I'm convinced from people I have interviewed...many of them...have made substantial changes toward becoming heterosexual. I came to this study skeptical. I now claim that these changes can be sustained."

Other prominent figures in psychiatry and psychology have also raised their voices in protest, including Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, a psychiatrist and physicist who has testified before Congress in favor of reparative therapy, and has denounced the hijacking of the mental health professions by homosexualist ideologues in his book, the "Trojan Couch".

"Some of my psychiatric and psychological colleagues have woven for themselves their own set of illusory robes of authority, and for the past 35 years have been proclaiming doctrines in the public square that depend upon the authority that derives from the public's belief that these robes exist," Satinover said in a recent interview .

"The diagnostic change that in 1973 removed homosexuality as a formal disorder from the American Psychiatric Association'sDiagnostic and statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a change that many now accept as simply indisputable in spite of the fact that it was based wholly on fiction," he added.

"The question isn't just homosexuality, said Satinover, "but rather, freedom from all sexual constraint. This has been an issue for civilization for thousands of years...We now have so little of a moral compass that we're really completely at sea. We're awash in the tide of unconstrained instinctive behaviors which are all being labeled 'okay' because nobody really has a sense, any more, as to what's right and what's wrong."

Whither Psychology?

The debate over reparative therapy for homosexuality runs deeper than the issue itself. It is arguably a debate over the future of the psychological professions as a whole.

Although there are signs that an increasing number of mental health experts are taking an honest look at the facts regarding homosexual behavior and sexual orientation therapy, there are other signs that portend an even darker future for the profession.

In 1998, the APA released a study by three psychological researchers from Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan, claiming that the "negative potential" of adult sex with children was "overstated" and that "the vast majority of both men and women reported no negative sexual effects from their child sexual abuse experiences." It even claimed that large numbers of the victims reported that their experiences were "positive," and suggested that the phrase "child sex abuse" be replaced with "adult-child sex."

The APA not only passed the paper through its peer review process where it was approved by multiple psychologists associated with the organization, but actually published it in one of its journals, Psychological Bulletin. Moreover, when objections were raised by radio talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger and various pro-family groups, the organization defended the article for an entire year. It was also defended by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which chillingly stated that it "saw no clear evidence of improper application of methodology or other questionable practices on the part of the article's authors."

Although the sheer insanity and destructiveness of the content should have prevented the APA from publishing the article in the first place, the sexual libertines in charge of the organization only issued a muted retraction after the U.S. Congress joined the fray, passing an unprecedented resolution condemning the study.

The publication of the paper was only one example of such lunacy by mental health professionals in peer-reviewed journals. One of the three authors of the study, Robert Bauserman, has a history of publishing pedophilia-advocacy "studies," including one for the now-defunct journal Paidika, The Journal of Paedophilia, whose editors admitted to being pedophiles.

Since the 1998 article, Bauserman and fellow author Bruce Rind have gone on to write more articles defending child sex abuse, which have appeared in such mainstream journals as the Archives of Sexual Behavior (2001) and Clinical Psychology (2003). Apparently, the psychology profession is comfortable with Bauserman and Rind's work, and intends to continue publishing it.

Another apologist for child sex abuse who has received acceptance, affirmation, and recognition from the mental health professions is Dr. Theo Sandfort , who is currently an Associate Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences (in Psychiatry) at Colombia University. Sandfort published a study in 1981 that claimed that boys as young as 10 years old had "positive" experiences in their "sexual relationships" with adults.

While he was co-director of the research program of the Department of Gay and Lesbian Studies at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, Sandfort interviewed 25 boys from between the ages of 10 and 16 who were in such "sexual relationships" -- that is, they were being sexually abused by adults. In fact, the abusers themselves took Sandfort to their victims so he could interview them. When the victims gave Sandfort their "positive" responses, he duly recorded them.

"For virtually all the boys ... the sexual contact itself was experienced positively," Sandfort wrote, without a hint of irony.

The fact that Sandfort was promoting the sexual abuse of minors with the help of their victimizers didn't seem to faze him. Nor did it faze his then-employers at the University of Utrecht. Nor did it faze the prestigious University of Colombia, which later gave him a professorship, even after he went on to write articles such as "Pedophile relationships in the Netherlands: Alternative Lifestyles for Children?" and books such as "Childhood Sexuality: Normal Sexual Behavior and Development" (2000).

It hasn't fazed the APA either, which has named Sandfort a "fellow" of the organization since 2002.

The defense and even the promotion of mental health experts who defend child sex abuse is a terrifying, but expectable movement down the slippery slope of sexual hedonism embraced by the powers that be at the APA. It not only threatens homosexuals, who are deceived by the seductive argument that their orientation is nothing to worry about, but psychology and psychiatry themselves.

The outcome of the current battle over the science of homosexuality may well determine the future of the mental health professions as a whole. Will they turn back from the brink, or plunge into the abyss? And what will become of the societies that heed their counsel?