Another former patient of Dr. Joseph Nicolosi comes forward
Jim Burroway
May 3rd, 2008
Earlier this week, Daniel Gonzales provided his reaction to the recent Byrd, Nicolosi & Potts paper that appeared in Psychological Reports. Daniel’s comments were based on his own experience as a former patient of Dr. Nicolosi’s:
In my first session of therapy with Dr. Nicolosi he repeatedly pressed myself and my father, who was there with me, asking us if I had been molested as a child — which I hadn’t. In fact, much of that first session was focused on “digging around” for the supposed cause of my homosexuality.
Gabriel Arana, a Cornell University grad student and columnist for the Cornell Daily Sun, has come forward to write about his remarkably similar experience with Dr. Nicolosi in a recent column:
For three years I had weekly sessions with Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, president of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). Dr. Nicolosi thought that homosexuality was a pathology, a sublimated desire to reconnect with one’s lost masculinity. The theory: under-attentive fathers and over-attentive mothers create gay children. The purpose of therapy was to put me in touch with my masculine identity and thereby change my sexual orientation.
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Wharf and Weft
false bravado
For three years I had weekly sessions with Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, president of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). Dr. Nicolosi thought that homosexuality was a pathology, a sublimated desire to reconnect with one’s lost masculinity. The theory: under-attentive fathers and over-attentive mothers create gay children.
The purpose of therapy was to put me in touch with my masculine identity and thereby change my sexual orientation.
I would like to say that I resisted therapy throughout, but the truth is that I liked and respected Dr. Nicolosi. And the theory sounded plausible (I was too young to know that plausible does not mean true).
It is a period in my life that I do not think about often, not because it hurts especially but because it has become increasingly irrelevant.But Mike Wacker’s column in the Sun last week (“View From the Right: Gender, Psychology and Science”) brought me back. Wacker condemns the American Psychological Association (APA) for its position against sexual reorientation therapy. He cites a study by Dr. Robert Spitzer that found gays could change and criticizes cultural critics for citing philosophers instead of scientists. He presents Dr. Spitzer’s study as an instance of the psychological community ignoring science in favor of ideology.
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Truth Wins Out
Survivor Recalls Leading Ex-Gay Therapist’s HIV/AIDS Superstitions and Research Fraud
Posted May 3rd, 2008 by Michael Airhart
Ex-gay survivor Daniel Gonzales remembers being forced to sit with his father as a leading ex-gay therapist tried to make them falsely believe that Gonzales had been abused as a child. The same therapist later urged Gonzales to help him rig the results of a flawed 2001 study by Dr. Robert Spitzer.
Former ex-gay Peterson Toscano was horrified to discover that the same therapist — the longtime president of a supposedly secular organization that promotes ex-gay therapy — has been using his phony claim to be secular to spread blatant religion-based bigotry having nothing to do with science or mental health.
Now, from 2006 Yale University graduate Gabriel Arana, comes word that the therapist — Joseph Nicolosi of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality — mis-counseled him for three years, teaching him superstitions instead of truth. Among the myths:
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