Joseph Nicolosi

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Joseph Nicolosi

Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, founder and director of the Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic, in Encino, California, and the President of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). For the last 15 years, his professional focus has been reparative therapy, whose proponents attempt to change people with same-sex sexual attraction to a heterosexual orientation. His Ph.D. is from the California School of Professional Psychology.

He has written 3 books: Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality: A New Clinical Approach; Healing Homosexuality: Case Stories of Reparative Therapy and most recently, A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, co-written with his wife Linda Ames Nicolosi. He and his wife have one son.

1 Criticism
2 Theory of Reparative Therapy
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Criticism

Main article: Reparative therapy#Controversies, criticisms, and scandals

The medical and scientific consensus is that attempts at eliminating same-sex attractions are not effective and are potentially harmful.^[1]

The ethics and efficacy of these procedures are rejected by all mainstream medical and mental health associations that have taken a position on the topic.^[1] Their stance is that sexual orientation is unchangeable, and that attempts to do so are often damaging to the person's well-being.^[1] The American Psychiatric Association states that "ethical practitioners refrain from attempts to change individuals' sexual orientation."^[2]

Major organizations that reject reparative therapy include the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Counseling Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Association of School Administrators, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Association of School Psychologists, and the National Education Association. ^[3].

[edit] Theory of Reparative Therapy

Joseph Nicolosi holds that homosexuality is the product of a mental disorder he describes as "gender-identity deficit" caused by an alienation from, and perceived rejection by, individuals of the subject's gender (see also Same-sex attachment disorder). This, it is argued, leads to a quest for bonding and fulfilment, oftentimes in what is perceived to be inappropriate and dysfunctional manners such as compulsive sexual gratification. It describes homosexuality as the need to possess the perceived manhood or womanhood of the object of desire:

"The basic premise of reparative therapy is that the majority of clients (approximately 90%, in my experience) suffer from a syndrome of male gender-identity deficit. It is this internal sense of incompleteness in one's own maleness which is the essential foundation for homoerotic attraction. The causal rule of reparative therapy is "Gender identity determines sexual orientation." We eroticize what we are not identified with. The focus of treatment therefore is the full development of the client's masculine gender identity."^[4]

Nicolosi suggests the subject, as a boy, first experiences rejection by his father, then lapses into helplessness and finally retreats to the security of his mother and defensively detaches from his father. According to his theories, this defensive detachment emotionally isolates him from other males and from his own masculinity hence, according to reparative therapists, causing homosexuality.

In general reparative therapists hold that homosexuality is caused by environmental factors, and reparative therapies focus on discovery of historical factors that could have influenced the development of their homoerotic emotions in a subject. See Sexual orientation for more information on this debate.

It is worth noting that reparative therapists hold that a propensity for an emotional bisexuality would seem to exist in all men, for example, as is evidenced by the male need for camaraderie and bonding. It is in the fulfilment of these unfulfilled needs that they believe the cure for homosexual attraction is to be found. Hence, it is not the innate emotional need for same-sex bonding that reparative therapy tries to correct, but what reparative therapists see as its dysfunctional expressions.