You can purchase an autographed copy of Anything But Straight by sending a $35 check or money order to:
-------------------------
Wayne Besen
PO Box 25491
Brooklyn, NY 11202
-- The symposium will be at 2:00 p.m. on Monday afternoon (5/5/08) in lecture halls 159 A & B in the Washington DC Convention Center --
Since 1973, the once dreaded American Psychiatric Association has become an ally of gay and lesbian equality. They have consistently withstood outside pressure from right wing organizations and instead chose to do what was in the best interest of GLBT mental health. Most notably, they endorsed same-sex civil marriage in a groundbreaking 2005 position paper.
In 1997, the APA first addressed ex-gay (or reparative) therapy by stating, "The potential risks of 'reparative therapy' are great and include depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior...Further, APA calls on these organizations and individuals to do all that is possible to decrease the stigma related to homosexuality wherever and whenever it may occur."
In 2000, the APA issued an even stronger statement and recommended "that ethical practitioners refrain from attempts to change individuals sexual orientation, keeping in mind the medical dictum, to 'first do no harm.'"
Unfortunately, a terribly misguided gay psychiatrist, Dr. David L. Scasta, is violating the spirit -- if not the letter -- of APA policy statements. In May, he will be part of a controversial symposium (Scasta calls it historic) he organized. It includes ex-gay therapist, Dr. Warren Throckmorton, who is the Sultan of Stigma and a leading purveyor of religion-based shame therapy.
Writing in the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists' newsletter, Scasta claims this forum will seek, "common ground" on "both sides of the religious divide." He also urges that participants keep the symposium, "scientifically and rationally based" and hopes those on stage are committed to, "avoiding rhetoric." Near the end of his article, Scasta claims his goal is to "ratchet down the forces of polarization."
If the seminar's mission is to let cooler heads prevail, inviting Throckmorton is a curious choice. An unlicensed psychologist who teaches at fundamentalist Grove City College, Throckmorton wrote an inflammatory paper for a right wing website titled, "Is Sexual Re-orientation Possible?", that compared leaving homosexuality to quitting smoking.
"Most people who stop smoking report cravings but don't give into them," Throckmorton wrote in his paper. "Does this minimize their status as former smokers?"
In the same paper, Throckmorton claimed that he "healed" a gay client after teaching him "self-understanding and assertiveness." Even more bizarre, Throckmorton suggested taking anti-anxiety drugs might "cure" homosexuality.
Throckmorton also produced a defamatory ex-gay video entitled, "I Do Exist." The movie's opening scene was a wide shot of New York pornography shops that supposedly represent gay life. His film featured Joanne Highley, a known exorcist.
Scasta's having an extremist like Throckmorton talk about reconciliation between religion and the science is like inviting Louis Farrakhan to a seminar to discuss Mid East peace between the Jews and the Palestinians.
Asked what he thought about the symposium, Dr. Jack Drescher, former Chair of APA's Committee on GLB Issues said, "In our AGLP newsletter, Dr. Scasta described this panel as 'Letting the Wolves into the Hen House.' I can only speak for myself, but I'm pretty sure no one at the APA will be eaten. But I am concerned that when a respected colleague lies down with wolves, he may catch something more than he bargained for."
While Scasta may be well intentioned, he seems woefully ignorant of his guest's dubious credentials. Scasta justifies offering Throckmorton a platform because the doctor has rebuked the infamous Dr. Paul Cameron (who claimed gay people die by the age of 40). Big deal. Cameron had become so radioactive that even Focus on the Family admonished him as early as 1996 saying they do not "adhere to Cameron's statistics."
Scasta also points out that Throckmorton called bizarre ex-gay therapist Richard Cohen a "menace." What he fails to say is that Throckmorton wholeheartedly supported Cohen up until the moment Cohen humiliated himself on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Similarly, in a desperate attempt at self-preservation, Throckmorton took "I Do Exist" off the shelf the very week one of his "changed" subjects seemed to back away from supporting ex-gay ministries. The good doctor appears to have a habit of altering the facts by omission.
Throckmorton tries to appear enlightened because he rejects traditional "reparative therapy" which blames parents for causing homosexuality. This has more to do, however, with his ongoing campaign to undermine his chief rival, reparative therapist, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi.
Throckmorton's goal is to supplant Nicolosi's reparative therapy model with his own ex-gay therapy regimen, known as Sexual Identity Therapy (SIT). Instead of blaming parents, SIT urges clients to suffer in deep, closeted denial in order to please God. Although Throckmorton says he has counseled 250 patients, he is unable to bring any of his successful cases forward.
Finally, Throckmorton habitually downplays the harm done by ex-gay therapy, despite the increasing number of survivors who have come forward to discuss their negative experiences. Why aren't any ex-gay therapy victims represented on this panel?
It is a mystery why Scasta would want to legitimize a fringe professor from a small anti-gay fundamentalist college. Instead of furthering understanding, Scasta is eroding his own standing and possibly that of the American Psychiatric Association. Scasta is placing science on the same plane as right wing sophistry - all at the expense of the mental health of GLBT people.
5 Comments:
I don't too much about this, but it may be thatScasta is really trying to give the Throckster a forum ewhere he can totally embarass himself.
posted by Anonymous, at
3/25/2008 12:52 PM
I smoked for nine years and then quit. I had terrible withdrawals, but I used a nicotine patch and stuck with it, and they went away after a while. I don't crave cigarettes anymore.
I also never fell in love with a cigarette, bought a home with it or tried to start a family with it.
posted by Anonymous, at
3/25/2008 5:37 PM
This could get entertaining.
Doc Throck is so nutty, he deserves to have his own "Mad Scientist" kit from Parker Bros.: complete with a rubber band, a copy of 'The Pink Swastika, a dildo and ball gag, a 1972 "homosexual statistics" rhetoric page, and a VHS tape of Peter LaBarbera's homosex pornography.
posted by S., at
3/26/2008 5:35 AM
Wayne, while I may take umbrage at being characterized as a “terribly misguided psychiatrist,” I can understand your angst. I have not taken the steps I have taken without a lot of soul searching and discussions with a host of colleagues over the last two years preparing for this time. Allow me to make a few comments about the material mentioned in your blog about my symposium at the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting, entitled: Homosexuality and Therapy; the Religious Dimension with Dr. Throckmorton, Dr. Mohler, Dr. Peteet, and Bishop Robinson joining me on the panel.
By way of background for your readers, I served for many years as the newsletter editor of the Association of Gay & Lesbian Psychiatrists and, in that capacity, served as the de facto office director. I later became president of AGLP, served as the president of the gay caucus of the American Psychiatric Association, and founded the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy. I currently sit on the Committee of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Issues of the APA and am AGLP’s delegate to the Assembly (the legislative body) of the APA. In short, I have been a quiet gay advocate for over a quarter of a century. Although I have periodically received commendations for my efforts, to a large degree I have floated below the radar – which is fine with me; I do my best work quietly in the background. I believe in the cause and am frequently annoyed by my colleagues who believe in themselves first and the cause second.
I found it enlightening to have been pointed via your links to Sara Robinson’s March 5, 2008 article entitled, “Learning from the Cultural Conservatives: Part II; Taking Up the World View.” Writing about progressive liberals she states:
“We like to believe that the progressive worldview is so patently superior that intelligent people will readily see the logic of it, and then sensibly adopt it as the best way to think and live. If people resist it, it's only because they don't completely understand it (yet). Fixing that is simply a matter of education: we just need explain our vision more clearly. Our own resolute faith in the power of reason convinces us that reasonable people will be reasonably persuaded by reasonable discussion of reasonable ideas. It's time to consider the reasonable possibility that we may be wrong… The hard, cold fact is that words and logic will never get us down to the deep, pre-rational places where people's foundational worldviews are shaped. If we want to create change at that foundational level, we need to engage [cultural conservatives] emotionally, in the pre-verbal places where images, poetry, myths, and ritual reside”
The fantasy is that we will use “Truth” to so completely destroy the opposition that they will cease to exist. Destruction is the often-not-so-unconscious fantasy behind all aggression. I have slowly come to the conclusion that the use of reason by gay advocates has become increasingly impotent over the years because of our tendency to preach to the choir. So many of my colleagues write papers, do talks, teach at universities, participate in talk shows, etc., in forums in which the audience is already favorable to their views. They get high fives from their audience, assuring them that they once again have destroyed the gay detractors. But the gay detractors aren’t around and are not listening. And, I have seen more overt antigay discrimination in the last four or five years than I have seen in the previous two decades as the gulf between antigay religious conservatives and gay affirming liberals widens. Just last month, the offices of the Woodhull Foundation in Washington, DC (which supports political advocacy for gay causes) were shot up. The month before Oklahoma State Representative, Sally Kern, (whose husband is a Baptist minister), was surreptitiously taped launching into a tirade about how gay people are the worst enemy that our culture faces – worse than Al Qaida. She warned her listeners that gays were going after two year old children trying to convince them that the gay lifestyle is all right even though the Bible says it is not. While gay advocacy has languished in the halls of academia, the social conservatives have launched a devastating attack on gay tolerance from the pulpits of conservative churches. There is an air of distain among some gay advocates who denigrate religion and refuse to have anything to do with those who are people of faith. The belief is that conservative Christian evangelicals in particular are so rigid and so uncompromising in their beliefs that they will never change: “the Bible said that homosexuality is wrong; end of discussion. “
I know differently. I grew up in a Southern Baptist church in Texas. I went to Baylor University (the flagship of Southern Baptist Universities which has become one of the 10 most gay-hostile universities in the country). I was licensed as a Southern Baptist Minister at age 19. I know the Christian right; I come from them. They are not the brain dead religious automatons that some of my colleagues suggest. Allow me to relay a personal experience with that regard.
In 1998 the national board of the American Baptists Churches endorsed the decision of two West Coast regions to remove several churches from their rosters which refused to condemn homosexuals. Baptists aren’t supposed to do that because the power to set theological policy is in the local church, not at the regional or national level. The controversy hit the local media as several East Coast regions expressed outrage. The National Board relented and allowed gay affirming regions to take in the churches that were thrown out, even though they were geographically distant. I was on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia region (Eastern PA) when the controversy hit, and the regional Executive Minister, Larry Waltz, asked for help in preparing the Philadelphia region to accept one of the “disfellowshipped” churches.
The task was daunting. It was easy to find liberal, white American Baptists who had no difficulty accepting gays into their churches in an urban region like Philadelphia. But the American Baptist Church is the most ethnically diverse of all the American protestant religions. A little over half of the Philadelphia region was African American. Conservative, fundamentalist: as one African American said to me, to even say the word, “homosexual,” in a church sanctuary is a sacrilege. To hear the diatribes, one would think that there would never be any compromise from conservative ethnic enclaves which saw the Bible as immutable and the thought that homosexuality might not be sinful as unfathomable. There was an underlying sentiment that the whole issue was racist because it distracted the country and the Church from the real problems of the world: social and economic injustice, poverty, racism, drug abuse, crime, and all of the other travails which affected African Americans disproportionately – while white folk tried to convince black folk that the Church’s resources should be focused on trying to convince people that sin that was predominantly in white folks’ churches is not sin anymore.
For the next two years, Rev. Waltz guided a study of the issue of homosexuality. The Board of Directors was exposed to discussions about the theological, sociological, psychological, and polity issues. And, it was exposed to real gay people and real gay parents – from among their own. When it came time for a vote to take in a disfellowshipped church from San Jose, California, I was stunned to hear the dean of the African American ministers, stand up and state, “I have to ask myself, what Christ would do? I believe Christ would take in this church.” The church was in.
The African American ministers were not convinced by any theological or polity arguments; but they did identify deeply with the issue of Social Justice. They found a common ground with gay people. My construct of fundamentalist Christians underwent some major changes in 1999. Speak their language, address their concerns honestly, listen, don’t get distracted by the “God-Talk” …and you may be surprised to hear some reasonableness and insight. But, you have to talk with them, not at them.
And we, of all people, need to be above reproach with our honesty even if it is not reciprocated. In the heat of argument, it is easy to let rationality and fairness slip as we spin data to bolster our views. But, hypocrisy will only bite us in the back side. We cannot accuse the other side of distorted, unscientific, illogical views and do the same thing ourselves.
But, as Sara Robinson pointed out:
“To our enduring detriment, movement conservatives never bought into [the power of reason]. They understood from the start that their ideas (which, frankly, don't stand up nearly as well in the face of clear rationality) would need to be aggressively promoted and sold, using emotional appeals that went to the heart of human beings' deepest desires and motivations. People don't commit their time, energy, and fortunes to a movement because it's all so logical and sensible. They join up because they've taken the movement's worldview deep into their hindbrains as their basic model of reality, and made an emotional connection to the ineffable feelings the movement deliberately stimulated -- in this case, fear, hate, and xenophobia as well as solidarity, reverence, hope, and security. In this model, the ideas only exist to provide a way to rationalize and express the deeper feelings the movement has already activated through other appeals. “Liberals operate from a position of strength on the battlefield of ideas -- and this may be why we consistently overvalue reason and undervalue emotional appeals. Our ideas do have a strong intellectual appeal. But we tend to forget that they also have a far healthier emotional appeal since we don't have to resort to stimulating fear and hate to get people to buy into them. Still, we've been notoriously terrible at stirring people's more positive and hopeful emotions, and getting them to resonate on a soul-deep level with the values that define our worldview. Clearly, we could stand to learn a thing or two from the conservatives about how they did this.” As I noted in the article which you refer to ( http://aglp.org/pages/cnewsletter.html , February 2008 Newsletter, Page 10), I have begun to see some cracking in the bulwarks of conservative intransigence about homosexuality as some social conservatives have begun to address the realities of the scientific and sociological data and the distortions among their colleagues. It was on a talk show that I heard Warren Throckmorton, Ph.D., acknowledge a study suggesting that gays may be harmed by reparative therapies. As I have gotten to know Warren, he is hardly the wicked barracuda that you paint him. He genuinely is struggling to devise ways of helping gay people of faith without harming them; and, to be scientifically honest. I do not agree with his current approach but I have seen substantial changes as he has moved away from more traditional religious right views about the causes and “cures” of homosexuality. So do I expect Dr. Throckmorton to become a regular guest on the Ellen DeGeneres Show and start decorating his house with multiple patterns of wallpaper? Good Lord, I hope not. That would kill his influence. And, quite frankly, we need him. He can reach people we will never have the opportunity to reach. It doesn’t mean that he is going to advocate everything that we would want advocated. He cannot do that and remain credible. But better some change, than no change.
I cannot help but shake my head a bit. You are worried about Dr. Throckmorton. The larger threat on my symposium may well be from Dr. Mohler. Dr. Mohler is a superstar of the religious right. He is the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the flagship of Southern Baptist seminaries. Until aborted by his recent surgery he was a candidate for the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention: the largest protestant denomination in the country (16 million members). He is a prolific and highly articulate theologian with many publications and his own radio show. In the “liberal Northeast” his influence is not so well know. I can tell you, however, that in my native state of Texas that, if Dr. Mohler was in the room and the governor of Texas was in the room, the crowd would be more impressed with Dr. Mohler. In the central Texas communities there is a priority: first to God, then to Texas, then to the United States, then to football, and finally to family. Dr. Mohler represents God; the governor is one step below. So why expose gay affirmation to such a threat? Because Dr. Mohler is the one of the first religious leaders to be able to step back and address the possibility that homosexuality might not be a choice – which brought him a lot of grief from Southern Baptists who feel that the Bible implies that the orientation is a choice just like any other sin. Dr. Mohler is not going to encourage religious acceptance of homosexuality, but he reaches out in a way which no one else of his stature has.
The cracks in the bulwarks of religious hubris are opening the way for the search for common ground. In my symposium Dr. Mohler will be sharing his thoughts with the Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire, who is the first openly gay bishop of the Episcopal Church. Bishop Robinson has been in the news frequently as the Anglican Community wrestles with schisms created by his election. He will be bringing a message of peace and hope for gay people of faith. The symposium will be challenging and stimulating, addressed to psychiatrists (who are often suspicious of religion). Will the symposium result in giving the official stamp of approval to antigay predators who will now use the APA to beat up on gay people? Not a chance. Will it change the way we do business with people of faith who oppose homosexuality? Maybe. I hope so.
David L. Scasta, M.D. Distinguished Fellow, the American Psychiatric Association Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Temple University Medical Center
P.S., For the record, I did want to respond to some of your direct questions and criticisms. In doing so, I do not intend, Wayne, to diminish your work. You put people’s feet to the fire to, in the words of my profession as a forensic psychiatrist, “put them to their proofs.” I would just caution that Truth can be interpreted many ways, and sometimes some of them are not just.
You keep referring to Dr. Throckmorton as an “unlicensed” therapist. To set the record straight, I include his response below, because, as a licensed physician in Pennsylvania, I know that Dr. Throckmorton has never been charged with practicing without a license in Pennsylvania. It is easy to vilify our opponents, but let’s be fair.
Warren: I was a co-author of the Sunrise report that the legislature in PA required to craft the Licensed Professional Counselor law. We called for a bill that would require people to be licensed to practice clinical counseling and psychotherapy. I helped write the scope of practice section based on my research into scope of practice requirements for reimbursement and legal ability to conduct psychotherapy (my doctoral dissertation related to this area). I was very involved in the writing, and promotion of the LPC law in PA after I moved [to Pennsylvania from Ohio]. However, the legislature declined to pass a [scope of] practice bill; instead, passing a [professional] title bill which [psychotherapists do not need] unless they are going to be file claims for third-party reimbursement. I applied to get my LPC credential years ago, but have not been vigorous about seeing it to completion since I do not need it [to practice] and it does not regulate practice. Even though I was licensed in good standing in Ohio, I have to prove all prior experience and take a new test before I can be licensed here. I was eligible for licensing as a psychologist when I first moved here but was committed to the counseling profession, having been president of the American Mental Health Counselors Association and having gotten the PhD in a community counselor education program. This PhD prepares people to train MA level counselors and to improve and advance clinical counseling skills. The loophole closed for psychology licensing after I arrived in Pennsylvania.
Scasta’s Note: Dr. Throckmoton is primarily a college professor, not a therapist. And, parenthetically, the LPC licensing came under the Board of Social Workers. Social workers were not excited about creating a whole new class of psychotherapists that would compete with them which made the whole issue of LPC’s politically charged.
Wayne: In 1997, the APA first addressed ex-gay (or reparative) therapy by stating, “The potential risks of ‘reparative therapy’ are great and include depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior. Further, APA calls on these organizations and individuals to do all that is possible to decrease the stigma related to homosexuality wherever and whenever it may occur.” In 2000, the APA issued an even stronger statement and recommended “that ethical practitioners refrain from attempts to change individual’s sexual orientation, keeping in mind the medical dictum, to “first do, no harm.”
David: It is helpful to get the flavor of the statement by looking at the whole position statement in context:
“As a GENERAL PRINCIPLE, a therapist should not determine the goal of treatment either coercively or through subtitle influence. Psychotherapeutic modalities to convert or “repair” homosexuality are based on developmental theories whose scientific validity is questionable. Furthermore, anecdotal reports of ‘cures’ are counterbalanced by anecdotal claims of psychological harm. In the last four decades, ‘reparative’ therapists have not produced any rigorous scientific research to substantiate their claims of cure. Until such research is available, APA RECOMMENDS that ethical practitioners refrain from attempts to change individual’s sexual orientation, keeping in mind the medical dictum to first, do no harm” [capitals added]
I am on the committee which voted last year to reaffirm this position. However, the statement is somewhat inconsistent in that it does suggest, not so subtly, that the therapist’s goal of treatment should be to support sexual orientation rather than change it – which is my belief so I supported it. Dr. Throckmorton will be taking the position that sexual orientation change should not be assumed to be the goal of treatment even for social conservative therapists.
Regardless, the position statement in no way says that these issues cannot be discussed in a symposium. There was a time when the position of American psychiatrists was that homosexuality was a sign of serious psychopathology. If we had declared it unethical to discuss controversial issues back then, psychiatrists would never have changed their view to their current non-pathology view.
Wayne: Throckmorton wrote an inflammatory paper for a right wing website titled, “Is Sexual Re-orientation Possible?” that compared leaving homosexuality to quitting smoking: “Most people who stop smoking report cravings but don’t give into them,”
David: It is again helpful to see the whole statement (it was a transcribed speech not a paper) to get the gist of what Warren was trying to say: “Most people who stop smoking, report cravings but often don't give in to them. Does this minimize their status as ‘former smokers?’ Experience is a part of our consciousness and appears to be encoded. But that encoding is not terribly selective. I occasionally think of a Bee Gees song. Does that make me a discophile? God forbid! So people who set out to change should not be discouraged by those who say having homosexual thoughts means sexual orientation really hasn't changed. I would go further: What does it mean when the homosexually oriented person has a heterosexual attraction or action? Could it be that they are latently heterosexual? Or could it mean that sexuality is fluid and subject to self-reflection?” Warren is arguing that sexual orientation is not as fixed as some would suggest. But he goes on to state: “Some of those who accept sexual reorientation probably see sexual orientation as a given trait, but one that can be modified or even completely changed by strength of will or spiritual deliverance. In my view the jury is out on this issue. We do not have a complete picture.”
Wayne: In the same paper, Throckmorton claimed that he “healed” a gay client after teaching him “self-understanding and assertiveness.”
David: Warren views the “healing” of the client a bit differently. He reported what the client understood of himself with self exploration. Whether the client was accurate in that view is another matter.
Wayne: Even more bizarre, Throckmorton suggested taking anti-anxiety drugs might “cure” homosexuality.
David: He reported a case with that claim from a journal. Warren wrote:
“I want to finish my review of cases by citing an older case discussed by Joseph Wolpe in 1960 and later again in a 1973 book on behavioral therapy. Dr. Wolpe was a pioneer in behavior therapy and widely considered to be the developer of systematic desensitization, a behavioral technique applied to a full range of anxiety disorders. In the mid-1950s, a man presented who wished to renounce his exclusively homosexual feelings and behavior for what seemed to Wolpe like religious objections. Wolpe responded by attempting to relieve the man's guilt. While this seemed to help with the anxiety, the man still wanted sexual reorientation. In what seems like a very current response, Wolpe refused, based on studies which suggested a genetic basis for sexual orientation and therefore as Wolpe wrote, "impervious to conditioning methods." However, the client continued with the assertiveness counseling and eventually reported to Wolpe that his sexual interest in men was fading. To make a long story short, over the course of the next year, he completely lost his interest in men and found two young women who sexually interested him. He eventually married heterosexually and at 4-year follow-up reported that "his sex life was still in every way satisfactory.”
David: I went to Temple University Medical School for my residency specifically to study under Dr. Wolpe. Dr. Throckmorton is correct that Joe did not believe that behavioral therapy works for changing sexual orientation despite that anecdotal case. In fact, earlier, in 1968 Dr. Davidson, who pioneered electroshock avoidance therapy for homosexual orientation, publicly abandoned the behavioral technique as ineffective.
Wayne: Throckmorton also produced a defamatory ex-gay video entitled, “I Do Exist.” The movie’s opening scene was a wide shot of New York pornography shops that supposedly represent gay life.
David: In all fairness, I was responsible in major part for producing a film, Abomination, Homosexuality and the Ex-Gay Movement, which is the mirror opposite of Dr. Throckmorton’s film. We open with shots of a riot and fire bombings with men shouting, “Die faggot!” There is no historical precedent for this scene. It was used to set the mood about what could happen. I have watched Dr. Throckmorton’s views of his own film evolve. He now expresses concern about the film and “does not promote the film.” His current therapy views do not fit with this film which was completed a number of years ago. He is one of the few social conservatives who is willing to admit mistakes and make corrections. Would that gay activists were as willing to make such concessions.
Wayne: Scasta justifies offering Throckmorton a platform because the doctor has rebuked the infamous Dr. Paul Cameron (who claimed gay people die by the age of 40). Big deal. Cameron had become so radioactive that even Focus on the Family admonished him as early as 1996 saying they do not “adhere to Cameron’s statistics.”
David: Nonetheless, Focus on the Family has continued to cite the conclusions and you even highlight in your own blog, Representative Kern, who recently cited those conclusions in her clandestine tirade against gays in Oklahoma. Parenthetically, Dr. Throckmorton is the only social conservative who attacked Representative Kern’s remarks as untoward. Truth Wins Out, myself, and a host of organizations and people on the progressive left have condemned Cameron’s research only to see it resurface again and again. All of our condemnation has not had near the impact of Dr. Throckmorton’s condemnation on its use because he is one of “them,” and has credibility with “them.”
Wayne: Scasta also points out that Throckmorton called bizarre ex-gay therapist Richard Cohen a “menace.” What he fails to say is that Throckmorton wholeheartedly supported Cohen up until the moment Cohen humiliated himself on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Scasta: That’s not correct. He was criticizing Richard long before your appearance on the Daily show. First, let’s first be fair to poor Richard. You as well as I, through AGLP’s documentary, Abomination: Homosexuality and the Ex-Gay Movement, have made fun of Richard’s therapeutic technique of smashing a tennis racquet into a pillow, yelling, “Dad! Dad!” to create a catharsis which uncovers some form of alleged abuse from Dad. While that technique is easy to criticize as rather wacko, in fact, it is not new. When I was in graduate school in psychology in the early 70s, there was a therapy which became popular for awhile, called Primal Scream. Now I thought Primal Scream was on the fringe back then, but there were respected clinicians who pursued the technique. Richard hardly is the first to use therapeutic techniques which are not “evidence based.” Psychoanalysis (which is still practiced) is a classic example. There also is a body of literature which finds that one’s “school” of psychotherapy has little to do with efficacy of treatment – that it is the personal relationship with the client that is the healing modality.
Regardless, as I said in AGLP’s documentary, I was much more concerned about Richard’s technique of cuddling men in his arms to teach them that affection does not have to be sexual. This therapy approach also is not a new technique. Analysts at the Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital tried such techniques to “rebirth” borderline personality disordered patients who came from abusive upbringings. The technique did not work and in fact aggravated the borderline personality. Psychiatrists have come to recognize this intervention as a boundary violation with a high risk of harming the patient. Richard as a “formerly” gay man should not be cuddling his patient’s. While one might envision a study to see if the treatment works, the therapist certainly should not be in a position which potentially provides non-therapeutic gratification to the therapist. From that respect, Richard is a “menace.” Nonetheless, the conservative Christian right has been very reluctant to criticize Richard. Only recently has the ridicule been sufficient to stop Richard. But you are incorrect about Dr. Throckmorton. He was criticizing Richard’s approach long before, after an appearance on CNN. And, he tells me that he never, in your words, “wholeheartedly” supported Richard.
Wayne: It is a mystery why Scasta would want to legitimize a fringe professor from a small anti¬gay fundamentalist college. Instead of furthering understanding, Scasta is eroding his own standing and possibly that of the American Psychiatric Association. Scasta is placing science on the same plane as right wing sophistry – all at the expense of the mental health of GLBT people.
David: My standing is of little import if all I do is join my gay affirming colleges, congratulating ourselves about how successful we are in annihilating the arguments of the opposition – and nothing changes. I am well aware that I could become a pariah as a result of this effort (as might Dr. Throckmorton with his group). I would not take this step unless I thought it necessary and one which will ultimately make life less difficult for gay peoples. In the end it is not whether one is loved that counts; it is the love that is left behind that counts.
posted by Anonymous, at
4/18/2008 12:36 AM
Dr. Scasta - your review of Richard Cohen's "therapeutic" techniques, none of which has ever been proven to be of any use whatsoever for ssa, is mot interesting. The pillow pounding therapy is one used in bioenergetic analysis (re: Reich and Lowen), but has no studies at all to show its efficacy. The "holding therapy" (re: Martha Welsh) may have some promise in the treatment of Autism, but for ssa, there is nothing whatsoever as to its efficacy. It is more than likely an emotional need Cohen has to be holding others for more of HIS benefit than the client's benefit.
However, you have omitted one technique that hasn't been discussed much, licking. Cohen, although he will deny it, has used this bizarre therapy without any scientific proof whatsoever that it would do anything for ssa. He has used this "therapy" having mothers, lick their sons (yes, with the tongue, like a dog) on their face, neck, etc. You can just imagine the oepidal issues here. If mother isn't available anyone would do. Unless a therapeutic technique can be proven to be effective, it should be banned altogether. All of this bizarre therapy seems to be consistent with the fact that Cohen was permanently expelled for life from the American Counseling Association. It is this kind of nonsense therapy that puts people at risk.
Wayne: Perhaps you were not aware of this, but I think that Dr. Throckmorton's blog and public record will show that he has thoroughly investigated and exposed Richard Cohen many, many times for his bizarre therapies, his unprofessional conduct on the internet, etc. for the past several years. In many instances he may have received information from you site to go after Cohen.
posted by Anonymous, at
4/21/2008 2:26 PM
