Having declared a sincere admiration for Nick, I have to add that we disagree about his recent push to defend reorientation therapy as a modality. Nick is an endorser of the Sexual Identity Therapy Framework and I have heard him promote the ideals we support. Thus, I know that any person who sought change therapy from him would not get the usual reparative therapy explanations for homosexuality, nor would religion be used as a coercive tool. In other words, I don’t believe Nick wishes to defend any and all approaches to change therapy; I think he wishes to defend the right of clients to arrange their lives and seek help to do it. However, it is dismaying that his defense comes in the context of the JONAH’s court case. Much of what is done in the name of reorientation cannot be defended.
One area Nick and I disagree about is how much to emphasize the role and importance of bisexuality. Nick once told me that clients who had no prior heterosexual experience were not successful in changing orientation and so over time, the Kaiser-Permanente therapists discouraged orientation change for those clients,,,
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If all reorientation therapists were like Nick, I doubt we would have the conflict and polarization we have seen over the past decade or so. I also doubt there is anybody currently vocally defending reorientation who practices as Nick did. Current reorientation therapists blame parenting and masculinity deficits for same-sex attraction, some of them put people through emotionally taxing and empirically questionable human potential exercises, still others attempt to coerce people with religion. My impression is that Nick and his crew did none of that. Certainly, in all of my dealings with American Biodyne, no one ever suggested any of that. The emphasis was always on helping the client find strategies to enhance mental health and live in accord with their aspirations.
Nick’s closing paragraph makes me think that he believes that there are some, perhaps many, therapists who work empirically and ethically with “fully informed persons.” This is where we disagree. The way reorientation is practiced as I have seen it and heard it described at various conferences and by various therapists in my travels during the last decade or so gives me no confidence that he is right this time.
Nick Cummings USA Today Article on Reorientation Therapy
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