Counseling can be very rewarding but it can also be very, very emotionally draining. I counseled for 5 years at a CPC-mostly to high school students who were in for a pregnancy test. Very intense. I counseled on Tuesdays and my children got to the point if they “bad news” to tell me they would wait until after I counseled on Tuesdays to tell me knowing none of their transgressions would come anywhere near the problems I had deal with over the last 3 hours.
Yes. People need to feel the love of God penetrate through to the core of their being first, and then they will have plenty of time to consider what that means in terms of the morality of actions. Shame plants deep seeds of brokenness.
I wouldn’t go that far. Most of the really bad reparative therapy is gone now, thank God, and the remaining outfits are reasonably harmless – at least, NARTH is, so far as I can tell. It’s true, surely, that people with same-sex attraction need affection from same-sex friends, including physical affection. As long as the goal of therapy is mental and spiritual health, and not “orientation change”, I think therapy can be good for some people.
Thanks for the warning. I do fear that, if I pursue this as a life goal, the counseling part of it could become all-consuming. That’s why I want to get as many people in the Church as possible on the same page about all this. Maybe we can ALL relate in a healthy way to gay kids, and maybe we could thereby avert the worst of the shame-reaction that occurs.
NARTH basically forces the clients to create a narrative about absent fathers and mothers who are too close and also puts enough pressure on them to admit being abused that people turn what wasn’t abuse into abuse in their minds. That can be extremely injurious to the relationship between the person and the parents so I can actually cause harm.Yes. People need to feel the love of God penetrate through to the core of their being first, and then they will have plenty of time to consider what that means in terms of the morality of actions. Shame plants deep seeds of brokenness.
I wouldn’t go that far. Most of the really bad reparative therapy is gone now, thank God, and the remaining outfits are reasonably harmless – at least, NARTH is, so far as I can tell. It’s true, surely, that people with same-sex attraction need affection from same-sex friends, including physical affection. As long as the goal of therapy is mental and spiritual health, and not “orientation change”, I think therapy can be good for some people.
I don’t support thrusting children into reparative therapy, though!
When that happens, it’s the parents that need therapy, not their kids.
You paint with a broad brush, Joie. As a man with an absent father and an extremely close mother, I don’t dismiss out of hand the idea that this has something to do with my longing for real manhood. It was always closed to me, because my mother wanted me safe. Of course, this hasn’t damaged my relationship with my mom at all, since I would never think of bringing it up with her unless she made herself vulnerable to me first. (Nor do any halfway decent psychotherapists ever recommend their clients hash these things out aggressively with family members!)
Oh it doesn’t coerce people into creating them, it tells them they wont get better unless they admit it happened, slowly the person convinces themself of it because they want to get better. I’ve heard it from a number of people who went to reparative therapy.
That would fit my definition of coercion. I am sure that some reparative therapies have done this, but I do not have any such negative evidence about NARTH in particular. I do have some positive second-hand evidence about NARTH.
I’m sorry Joie, because this is a very serious issue, but this post really reminded me of this. It’s a nice little exaggerative and comical way of exposing what these “therapies” do, which is to say, plant stupid false ideas about the “roots” of your homosexuality in your head.
There are several problems with conversion therapy.
That was a funny movie
That sort of foolishness is what perpetrates the inanity suurounding the disorder and its treatment.
Interesting. Can you explain to me what the difference between “psychotherapy with the goal of orientation change” and “conversion therapy” is? Most people use the words “conversion therapy” to describe any attempt at orientation change – indeed, this is the reason why I myself do not condemn conversion therapy wholescale. Some level of orientation change could result from psychotherapy, in some cases, for all I know. If a psychotherapist observed this and had clients who desired such change, I see no ethical problem in providing therapy along those lines.
The “disorder” isn’t a “disorder” at all. It is a normal and healthy attraction that must be handled chastely, like any other attraction.
Just for the record, I think I misjudged you somewhat. You are absolutely right that the church has basically done nothing to reach out to the LGBT community. My 26 year old daughter has been lesbian since she was 16 so it’s a bit of a sore point for me. When she started with this **** at about 16, I tried everything to get her Christian help–preferably Catholic–and there was none. Then, as so often seems to occur with SSA kids, she got into drugs. To make a long story short, I live in a small town in Alaska with only 1 psychiatrist who is a 6’4" tall once male, now female (he had the surgery) thing with a huge adam’s apple and male pattern baldness, who–after becoming female physically promptly became a lesbian! Roll that one around in your mind awhile. Anyway, my daughter got in trouble over her drug use and was court ordered to see this psychiatrist and in the 6 months she spent with that THING, I just can’t tell you the damage she experienced. I see your dilemna–but I consider people like you to be a blessing and the only hope for a lot of young people out there!!!
False. A Catholic should know better.
A real Catholic knows that it is a disorder as the Church so teaches, and anything else is quackery.
False –see above.
No, the Church teaches that it is disordered in its object. The orientation itself, while aimed at an incorrect object, is not a disorder in any way as it does not hamper the life of someone who is only treated with love and compassion by others. For example:
The Church does NOT endorse conversion therapy. If it did, I wouldn’t have even become Catholic in the first place. I am not sure if preaching that the Church teaches something it does not is considered heresy, but if so, you are, at the very least, straddling a very fine line of it.
The difference is in training. As an example, some classically trained psychoanalysts believe that orientation is similar to neurosis (oversimplification) which has its origin in the oedipal complex of earlier childhood.The training for such therapists runs in decades. Read Homosexuality and Pseudohomosexuality by Lionel Ovesey. Compare this to seemingly miniscule training for conversion therapists and you can understand why professional mental health organizations say conversion therapy is unethical.
I too think that this is key. I hear similar things over and over on CAF but, unlike you, in many cases one is left with the impression that is is parroting without understanding.
The reality is that it is an objective disorder.
LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE PASTORAL CARE OF HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS
Extracts:
3. “In the discussion which followed the publication of the Declaration, however, an overly benign interpretation was given to the homosexual condition itself, some going so far as to call it neutral, or even good. Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.
Objective disorder yes. What does this mean in Catholicism? As I said, it means that the orientation is a disorder INSOFAR as it leads to a moral evil, e.g. homosexual sex. But as with every discussion on this issue, for some reason, people can’t understand that objective disorder doesn’t mean intrinsic disorder. An intrinsic disorder needs to be fixed because it constitutes a moral evil itself. An objective disorder is only a disorder as long as its object remains an evil. A person who uses a gay or lesbian orientation to further a moral good does NOT have an objective disorder. There is NO need to change one’s orientation, nor is it even possible.
As for Courage, I agree with you and disagree with Joie on the issue. Courage does necessitate that one tries to alter their orientation, although it does not require one be successful in doing so. As such, it is virtually a worthless organization, requiring a certain amount of self-hatred to join, disallowing for the possibility of accepting oneself as they are, and moving past merely helping people adjust behavior into trying to force people to deny their very selves. I consider Courage about as useful to Catholicism as any other fringe group in the Church.
There really need to be a true gay and lesbian organization within the Church that teaches acceptance of oneself, denial of one’s immoral wants through one’s behavior, love of oneself and others, pushes the moral requirement heterosexuals in the Church hold to treat gays with compassion and respect, and actually provides a community for gays and lesbians in the Church. We currently don’t have that, and I highly suspect it’s due to overly conservative paranoid crazies in the Church who can’t possibly imagine gay people who are content with their sexuality not uncontrollably sleeping together (or parading) when they collect together.