Too bad most people won’t learn about it. A landmark new study details how treating traumatic childhood memories can lead some adults with LGBT attractions toward heterosexuality.
Recently published in the Journal of Human Sexuality, the study examined 75 adult males who reported same-sex attractions and wished to explore their sexual attraction fluidity. Participants worked with professional therapists using Reintegrative Therapy, a treatment method that seeks to identify and resolve past traumatic memories.
Despite a dishonest campaign to associate this approach with the widely misrepresented “conversion therapy,” evidence is accumulating that trauma resolution therapy provides another option to many for whom change seemed impossible.
So, why are so many people unaware of these compelling findings?
Because Big Tech, in alliance with leftwing activists, is actively suppressing scientific data and client testimonials.
On January 15, Google-owned YouTube blocked all videos on my YouTube channel that referenced the research, along with testimonials from participants. They did so after a Forbes columnist, using cut-and-paste material from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, declared the Reintegrative Therapy work performed by me and others to be “hateful’ and “harmful.” The Gobal Project is pressuring social media companies to remove all content about unwanted same-sex attraction.
The Montgomery, Alabama-based group is run, not surprisingly, by people who used to work for the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center, which was riven by race and sex scandals and which to this day falsely characterizes mainstream Christian groups like Alliance Defending Freedom as “hate groups.”
In response to my inquiry about being blocked, YouTube permanently banned my account. In doing so, YouTube cut off many sexual-abuse victims from scientific information they need to make healthy decisions about themselves and their sexuality.
As a clinical psychologist who conducts this therapy daily, I often work with victims of past sexual trauma. Many of these clients report emotional distress, depression, and suicidal thoughts that are, on occasion, tied to unwanted same-sex attractions. Through evidence-based, patient-led therapy, some (though not all) of these individuals can make shifts along the sexual-fluidity spectrum, as their traumatic memories are resolved.
Unlike so-called “conversion therapy,” a catch-all term that can include discredited approaches that attempt to change sexuality, Reintegrative Therapy resolves memories that clients identify as being traumatic. Changes in sexuality that may occur are a byproduct. In fact, actively attempting to change one’s sexuality without resolving the trauma might interfere with this process.
Independent researchers assessed the participants’ sexual thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and identity — all of which demonstrated changes away from same-sex attractions and toward heterosexual attractions. On average, participants demonstrated significant decreases in psychological distress, such as anxiety, depression, and suicidality. They also showed significant overall increases in measures of well-being.
Suppression of this kind of research and therapy is part of a larger problem: Big Tech is becoming even more aggressive in censoring any content that doesn’t fit its narratives.
In July 2020, for example, Facebook and Instagram announced that they would ban all content that promotes “conversion therapy.” By misrepresenting any and all sexuality counseling as “conversion therapy,” this casts an absurdly wide net. Politicians who are rushing to criminalize what they mistakenly believe to be “conversion therapy” are being misled.
YouTube is a private company, and they have the right to ban whatever they want. But when a mega-corporation systematically suppresses one side of a scientific debate, it effectively shapes public opinion to its will and thereby contributes to spreading health misinformation — a practice YouTube preaches loudly against.
In the meantime, I’ve moved my videos over to Odysee — a decentralized video platform running on block-chain technology (like Bitcoin). That means it’s outside the meddling grasp of ideologically driven Big Tech corporations. I suspect platforms like it are where we’ll find the most compelling video content in the future….
The above comes from a Feb. 7 article by Joe Nicolosi, Jr. in the Christian Post. Nicolosi practices in Westlake Village and is the son of Joseph Nicolosi, who died in 2017.
People should be free to learn about and choose therapy for unwanted same-sex attraction. Pro-choice people should be speaking out for therapeutic choice. Choice in matters of mental and physical health care is, generally, a good thing. While we should protect babies and mothers from the violence of abortion, there are many matters about which Catholics can, and often should, be pro-choice. I and many others are pro-choice when it comes to religion, education, employment, voting, housing, marriage, and some other things. While the LGBTQ+ lobby insists that gender is fluid, they simultaneously claim that sexual orientation is set in stone. Maybe sexual orientation is not immutable. Why shouldn’t a person struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction be able to try reintegrative therapy? I know a few who’ve benefited from it. Let’s have some compassion and respect for our neighbors.
” Why shouldn’t a person struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction be able to try reintegrative therapy? ” Because it doesn’t work, it’s based on crazy ideas as to what causes homosexuality, and that’s not me saying that, that’s according to all secular professional psychological associations in the US and elsewhere. More than that, it causes a LOT of suffering.
If a person wants therapy to help them not act on their attractions, to live as the Church asks them, that’s fine. If people want therapy to help them overcome childhood trauma, fine. But childhood trauma doesn’t cause homosexuality or bisexuality. And we shouldn’t pathologist people’s decisions to choose a chaste life.
The lie in your post is revealed by pointing out that the “profession” the “government” and the “law” all consider it perfectly acceptable to counsel someone from heterosexual to homosexual leanings and acting out. It’s also acceptable to counsel children to change their gender identity or to dose them with chemicals to halt puberty and to mutilate people who don’t like their sexual anatomy. It’s only acceptable one direction: towards deviancy. Counsel someone to go from homo to hetero? Oh, that’s beyond the pale! Cannot allow it! Counsel a male child that he’s a boy not a girl? Oh, my gosh, call in the authorities for child abuse! Only affirming degeneracy and deviancy are allowed. It’s only in one direction. Affirming normalcy is prohibited and punished. That’s where our society is right now. And every normal, sane, healthy person agrees with me. And there will be pushback against the degenerate elites. It’s coming. For the sake of saving our children from degenerates, the pushback is coming, and it isn’t going to be pretty.
I know a few people for whom it has worked. Real people. I’m not saying it works for everyone, or even most, but compassion doesn’t cause us to bow to “all secular professional psychological associations,” especially when there’s evidence to the contrary.
Also, do you believe gender is fluid? If you do, then why do you insist that sexual orientation cannot be fluid.
YFC I often admire your posts, but I think that you are mistaken about this. If a young boy grows up without being traumatized, he will not develop same sex attractions. If a young boy becomes traumatized in a particular way that has to do with his sense of gender, then you create the homosexual condition.
That is not what the Church has taught.
Truer words were never spoke. Same goes for lesbians: what man abused them to make them turn to women for affection and a sense of being valued and loved? That’s the foundational question.
Dear Nicolosi patient, Thank you for your kind words, and I’m sorry for your traumatization, and I hope you find healing. But it is just simply not true that trauma is necessary for developing same sex attractions. It has been proven over and over and over again. Your experience is your experience, but isn’t necessarily transferrable to the entire world.
Dear Pro-choice Catholic – The question of fluidity is irrelevant to my post. But you have created a logical fallacy when you equate possible fluidity in gender and possible fluidity in sexual orientation. There is no a priori reason why the two are necessarily linked. And I think there is a strong likelihood that for those in whom this therapy “worked” were always bisexual from the beginning.
Dear Kevin T: There is no lie in what I stated, and your first statement is itself a lie. No one is counseled to go from heterosexuality to homosexuality or counseled to change their gender identity. Furthermore, it’s not that counseling someone to go from homosexuality to heterosexuality is beyond the pale, it is that it has been tried and failed for centuries, causing untold depression and suicidality in its wake.