These letters raise the issue of freedom of inquiry: Will the origins and normality or pathology of homosexuality be open to competing hypotheses; should therapy for homosexuals seeking change be encouraged? Hostility to these questions inhibits the environment for research and leaves all sides dissatisfied. Honest research in such an environment is impossible.
We at the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) have never challenged the admission policies of The American; we fully support the policy that homosexuality should not be a reason to exclude people from training in any health career.
Roughton's recent response and the above letters present the same worn-out canard that any criticism of the committee report is a disguised pitch for a return to prior policies regarding the training of candidates who are homosexual. Let me remind you that the former admission policies, though no longer acceptable, were applied by the same just and honorable people who now apply the new ones.
Why do you three gentlemen introduce the topic of NARTH or Socarides and his son?
Neither had anything to do with my challenge to Roughton's report. More divisive and destructive for the credibility of psychoanalysis are the ideas that homosexuality should now be dismissed as a normal sexual variation and that reorientation therapy, be it reparative or psychoanalytic, is unethical to render even for those who seek it. All sexual conditions must remain open to psychoanalytic scrutiny.
My exchange with Roughton over his report is now expanded to a forum with these allegations: TAP editorial policy reflects an antihomosexual bias in The American by publishing my letter alongside a NARTH meeting “advertisement”; NARTH is a “fanatically anti-homosexual organization”; Charles Socarides, Joseph Nicolosi, and I are biased beyond redemption, therefore our views should be dismissed as bigotry disguised as science; and decades of psychoanalytic theory on homosexuality should be regarded as a bogus use of theory to hide discrimination.
This exchange forum might yet be constructive if it leads to panels at meetings of The American and the APA to debate ideas that go beyond attempts to “capture the hearts and minds” of members and the public through the rhetorical “bites” presented by letters to the editor.
NARTH paid for the announcement of its annual meeting. “Insensitive” used herein is the buzzword admonition for politically correct self-censorship. None of you address my “major” concern—that open dialogue on homosexuality as a health issue not be squelched.
The statements that TAP promotes NARTH or its officers (I only wish) are absurd.
The policy debate of acceptance of homosexuals to full professional training and promotion in The American is closed. The admission process will select the best candidates it can—as always. We are supposed to learn from history, but, Roughton, you and Friedman would revise it and encourage others to reproach those of us who continue to discuss homosexuality, inside or outside The American, as a predominately developmental unfolding of the psyche affecting relational life.
The allegations made in the above letters speak eloquently for today's need of an organization outside The American or the “APAs.” NARTH is an eclectic, grassroots organization. There are now over five hundred members with diverse professional backgrounds, degrees, and credentials. Our membership includes distinguished members of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
We are not apolitical any more than The American or either of the APAs. As Lynch notes, we are pleased to also have as members therapists trained within the clergy. They are vigorous in their religious and scientific convictions.
We are accused of fanaticism and characterized as “homophobic” because we remain steadfast in the face of powerful efforts to normalize homosexuality. The assertion that we are antihomosexual is a blatant lie. Perhaps one-third of our membership are former gays. Some remain in reparative or reconstructive therapy while they help others—as do psychoanalytic candidates. They have experienced the homosexual life, are very familiar with it, and know it well. They find in NARTH an organization built on medical and dynamic mental health models that offers help to those who want out of that lifestyle.
There is an attempt not only to discredit NARTH but to ostracize its members. For example: NARTH was first organized in early 1992. Only six months later we were described in a report by the head of The Gay and Lesbian Task Force as “abusers of psychiatry,” and “an organization that must be isolated”—This was reported in the minutes of The American Psychiatric Association, in the February 1992 issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry. The “task force” went on to condemn reparative therapy as “unethical,” thereby making it a target for malpractice. This occurred in the APA before we had held our first scientific meeting, published a word, or made a mission statement! Clearly NARTH struck a chord and can be neither apolitical nor clinically neutral.
Rather than being homophobic, NARTH accepts homosexuality as an enigmatic pattern of relationships. As a phenomenon, homosexuality warrants ongoing intellectual, scientific, and social inquiry. Bias thrives, and we all have the responsibility to guard against journalistic censorship.
Dresser expresses dismay over the exclusion from membership in NARTH of Charles Silverstein, a prominent leader in the efforts to depathologize homosexuality. We welcome differing points of view from responsible therapists and research-ers. Silverstein's application is private. If he feels he wants it to be publicly ad-dressed he can let me know.
I am as depressingly exasperated by Dr. Friedman's letter as he is “saddened” by mine. He dismisses with the word “unsubstantiatable” decades of worldwide peer-reviewed research, globally published, that continue to reinforce theories relating to homosexuality. Some of the most respected names in theory construction of psychosexual development, and by more than inference, those who continue to use its explanatory power clinically, are now likewise discredited. I find much of Friedman's letter to be too hysterical for me to respond to. I take exception to his characterizing my criticisms of Roughton's report as a “mean-spirited … attack … based upon unresolved prejudice.”
Finally, the concept of “collective guilt” is beyond the scope of this discussion.
I hope future attempts to clarify positions on the nature of human nature, so important to people and the credibility of psychoanalysis, can be more objective and less acrimonious. I don't think it is too much to expect committee reports to be just that.
Ben Kaufman