"Just acting gay"?? You’re saying that girls french kissing and fondling each other are “just acting gay”?
Women and girls attempting to get the attention of/arouse males is heterosexual behavior. Even if it appears to be homosexual behavior on the surface.
What is it? (morally speaking of course)
You apologised to Elizabeth502 for distorting a post, or, as you put it, “not trying to lie”. You need to apologise for a few more misleading posts here as well.You cannot see a difference (morally speaking) between violent robbery and homosexual attraction?
John, I was not talking about homosexual behavior. The category described by the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) used by clinical psychologists and psychiatrists refers to homosexuals who cannot cope internally with their SSA. It is true that feeling comfortable with one’s homosexuality may LEAD to homosexual behavior, but technically that’s not what the classification is referring to. I don’t believe this feeling is as socially destructive as the behavior of bank robbery. Of course, you may disagree. Moreover, I didn’t express my personal views on the category in this post; only my impression that Elizabeth might not agree with it. My own view is that the category is silly, but not for the reasons you believe. My reason for not accepting the category is I don’t see ego-dystonic homosexuality as any more abnormal than ego-syntonic homosexuality, because I view the reaction to rejection by family, peers, and Church (the latter often in practice, if not in theory) as normal situational depression, which is not clinical depression. Now, this kind of depression may develop into a true clinical depression, however, and so I believe counseling is advisable. We have different views about homosexuality altogether, and that’s fine with me. But I don’t believe my passing definitional statement about the category (not really the main focus of my post, which was measuring treatment outcomes) is illogical.
Not really.
One causes objective harm, the other is merely a state of being.
Of course ego-dystonic homosexuality is possibly a cause for situational depression, but the unfortuante thing is that the culture has taken over this whole issue, building assumptions into sexuality which include that a priori all sexual behavior must be okay. (Thus, rejection by the person’s support group is seen as logically producing the depression, by elimination of other sources of depression – i.e., the unconscious.) And please, before you go on about how Freud has been supposedly discredited in the world of psychology, the man was brilliant in his development of id, ego, and superego, and his understanding of the permeability of the unconscious within our relationships especially. (i.e, the primacy of parental relationships, the need to substitute for parental relationships when those are lacking, the foundations for intimacy, etc.)
KInda like an Angry Atheist Huh?
Fascinating insights. Once again you force me to examine my preconceived notions. and make me dig deeper into human nature and the meaning of it all. Thank you.
Again, there is simply no evidence that even you or I was born “with a [predetermined] sexual orientation.” All the psychological study of real human subjects points to the contrary. We are open and receptive to sexual experiences when we are born; we experiment fluidly with our sexuality in our young years: this is the standard pattern. The fact that an orientation eventually develops and that we are not conscious of when and how it develops, at moments in time, does not mean that we were “born” one way. No, one does not “choose” in the sense of choosing between flavors of ice cream; rather, one makes choices depending on feedback supplied and feedback absent, on attempts at bonding tried, and attempts rewarded or rejected; on patterns of reward and on perceived acceptance of me-just-as-I-am by people of the same sex and people of the opposite sex, combined with hormonal configurations and other aspects of physiology – as they all interact with each other in a complex way.
Elizabeth, I didn’t think I would be staying up this late, but the discussion is interesting! Did I say that it was ALL about rejection? I thought I had agreed with your statement about the strong unconscious mind that tells gay people their attraction is unnatural and may even drive them to suicide. I did say I believe it’s not an either-or situation, that it can be BOTH societal rejection and inner conflict due to the unconscious (or the superego conscience, which is partly in the unconscious). I’m not negating Freud’s id, ego, and superego theory: there’s plenty in Freud I don’t agree with; however that theory I like. (You are apparently an ardent Freudian, but do you believe in his concept of determinism?) But what should I make of your assertion that gays may be unhappy in a friendly environment and happy in an unfriendly environment? You most likely say this to illustrate that society is not the be-all and end-all of gays’ depression. However, the statement itself, I think you must realize, can apply to any person, that is, any particular person, but NOT necessarily to most people. Most people are happy in a friendly environment and unhappy in an unfriendly environment, or don’t you believe that? Of course, there are internal personality and emotional processes involved on both a conscious and unconscious level; yet the nature of the environment can serve either to elicit or suppress those processes. Haven’t you also argued in favor of environmental influences on homosexual development, along with biological influences? What changes then later in life when gay people–as all people–think, feel, and behave in an environmental setting? I am not thereby denying the biological core of personality by saying this; there is an interaction between personality and environment, which both personality psychologists and social psychologists agree on. However, it’s a matter of emphasis, and you seem to be downplaying too much the influence that the social environment has on people, including gay people, though I’m not exactly sure why. Is it perhaps to justify the idea of internal moral standards regardless of the particular society?Again, there is simply no evidence that even you or I was born “with a [predetermined] sexual orientation.” All the psychological study of real human subjects points to the contrary. We are open and receptive to sexual experiences when we are born; we experiment fluidly with our sexuality in our young years: this is the standard pattern. The fact that an orientation eventually develops and that we are not conscious of when and how it develops, at moments in time, does not mean that we were “born” one way. No, one does not “choose” in the sense of choosing between flavors of ice cream; rather, one makes choices depending on feedback supplied and feedback absent, on attempts at bonding tried, and attempts rewarded or rejected; on patterns of reward and on perceived acceptance of me-just-as-I-am by people of the same sex and people of the opposite sex, combined with hormonal configurations and other aspects of physiology – as they all interact with each other in a complex way.
The fact that, given all that, a “logical” choice seems to emerge for most individuals, does not mean either that a homosexual person becomes that way out of masochism, nor that the heterosexual becomes that way out of a societal preference for approval. The “choices” (more like drifts) became apparent, logical, and conveniently indicated over time, for both orientations. Nevertheless, it does not mean that a homosexual is not opposing what is truly ordered in the universe.
Your theory that depression is all about rejection is just your theory. There is no evidence that it is definitively about societal rejection. (1) Homosexuals who live in a homosexual saturated environment, with exponential levels of approval, including often from their families who join P-FLAG, etc., nevertheless can be quite unhappy within extremely tolerant environments; (2) Homosexuals who live in disapproving environments are sometimes well-adjusted socially.
Unlike you, I did not attempt to prove the unprovable. I said, in post 345, that it was equally possible that our Unconscious, and our consciences, are screaming at us all the time, or at least trying to, and our repression of that Unconscious conscience can result in depresssion – and not only with regard to sexuality issues, but with regard to much else in life, as any student of literature would have to be aware of. You, OTOH, reject entirely that there is any core of the human person that unconsciously “knows” before the conscious knows. That is quite an unscientific statement on your part. It makes you look as if you simply have an agenda to blame society,entirely, for not accepting what it has legitimate difficulty accpeting.
But Meltzerboy, you were indeed talking about homosexuality. In fact you wrote this -
You were differentiating between ego-dystonic and ego-syntonic. The former involves an internal conflict between how a person percieves themselves to be, holistically, and what they are experiencing physically. That part of what you wrote which I underlined is suggesting they alter their entire view about themselves, just so they can feel comfortable about the part of themselves which is a disorder. Hence my bank robber anaology, which had nothing whatsoever to do with ‘social destruction’, or the harm that might be caused by a possible violent act, as some of the slower thinkers here thought. It was all about accepting a personal disorder to complete the ‘wholeness’ of the self identification. It might have been simpler if I’d used cleptomania as an analogy. For instance, let’s say I’m a wonderfully popular, handsome church going person. One who even puts $50 into the collection plate each Sunday. However, I have this wee problem. I just can’t help myself when I see a pretty shiny object in a store and so I pinch it. Other than that, I’m a perfect human being. Now, according to what you wrote and I underlined, I need to just accept that I’m a petty thief and hey presto, I’m whole again. With homosexuality, according to the logic of what you wrote and I underlined, changing the whole person to accepting the disorder is the ‘cure’. However, in the process you are only attempting to normalise the disorder. That is oxymoronic. Now don’t jump up and down and attempt to say it’s not a disorder, because even the DSM has the problem listed under the heading of Gender Identity Disorder.
John, I’m too tired to analyze your whole statement now, but with regard to the word “homosexuality,” I realize it often refers to behavior when used outside of psychology; however, in psychological lingo it can also mean one’s internal feelings apart from behavior. Also, gender identity disorder is a different problem. The disorder listed in DSM is ego-dystonic homosexuality, in which the issue is not gender, but sexual preference.
Yes, don’t worry, I understand that. Cheers.
Thank you for your response. I was young, angry and stupid 30+ years ago. I should not have beaten up guys who we thought were homosexual. And I’ve been condemned for this repeatedly here and elsewhere.
This is what I was referring to:
Two or three times, beginning with post 345, I declared both internal and external influences as equally probable sources of depression. To modern society (and this is what John has been saying as well), it’s all about the bad heterosexuals that won’t/can’t perceive homosexual activity as an ordered and healthy behavior, but rather an invasion of boundaries. I have not heard you say likewise, that you will admit to strong, primal forces within us, which is part of the universal condition of mankind.
People cope and compensate in all kinds of ways, for self-preservation of ego and body. But many of those choices (for all of us) are bad choices. We may be escaping something; we may be substituting something for what we really need or want unconsciously. And the patterns of those disordered choices – however passively they seem to have occurred, however logically arrived at – are compensations rather than affirmations. We still suffer, all of us, when we do that. Eventually, time catches up with us, because those ‘perverted’ decisions or choices that we felt were ‘necessary’ make us broken individuals when we do that, less capable of functioning fully. You act as if only gays kill themselves. Many gays do not. And many, many heterosexuals kill themselves over the consequences of many a disordered choice. (Wrong romantic choices, unhealthy lifestyle choices, and more) If they don’t go that far, they often end up committing major crimes – destroying themselves in that manner, instead. They often “take out” their families along with themselves, in acts of violence. For those situations less dramatic, people sometimes cope neurotically but unsuccessfully in relationships and careers.
I never made such a connection; it’s your “question,” not mine. It’s a straw man.
yes, an urge is s ‘state of being’