Conversion therapy? It must be banned. I should know - Times Article

[Igneococcus]

I won't have time to read it until this evening but here's a sharetoken for anybody who wants to read it.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/4dd2db47-3e00-48b4-b18f-aa86d1c72b34?shareToken=dec07cd3b03ba747960cb1d0eccac34a

I’m straight so of course might be missing the point. Surely going into therapy saying you are unhappy when you are actually content is going to be destabilising? You are there under false premises.

I found therapy destabilising, exhausting and upsetting but was in fact significantly better off as I processed it.

I disagree with conversion therapy, but people need to be able to explore their sexuality in therapy. Maybe the issue is therapy being offered by specific campaign groups.

Perhaps pregnancy counselling and sexuality counselling should never be offered by people with opinions.
In fact it obviously shouldn’t- why aren’t these people disbarred?

She makes a dismissive reference to Kemi Badenich being concerned that trans affirmation is conversion therapy for young LGB people, but either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that the evidence for that comes from ex-Tavistock staff.

The approach is ridiculous and unprofessional and not really journalistic. But what she describes does sound like a really unhealthy approach for a mental health professional to take. Almost the opposite of the sort of exploratory therapy I’d expect for someone who was unhappy with their sexuality (or gender).

They seem to not understand sexuality and gender dysphoria! Terrible journalist

If I grew up in one of those oppressive communities and really struggled with my sexuality, I may go into therapy hoping to end up straight or come to terms with celibacy. Would I be able to access therapy if conversion therapy was banned?

Wouldn’t it be better to just ban appalling abusive practices of all kinds , and allow therapists to judge the best way to support people?

Exactly.

Banning Trans "conversion therapy" = Implementing LGB conversion therapy

It seems that any comments under the article explaining that transitioning potentially gay children IS conversion therapy, seem to get deleted.

Why are you posting an article you haven't even read? What's your point with this thread - do you have a comment about it?

Clearly, OP is graciously sharing the article for others who may have time and inclination to read it. What is your point with this comment?

she makes a glib comment that it should be easy to ban therapy where the therapist has an intended outcome from the outset. But that would then ban puberty blockers and cross sex hormones for all same sex attracted people, as the intention is, even if it not the only intention, to make that attraction “straight”.

I don't understand why specific conversion therapy bans are desirable to anyone anyway.

For the healthcare side of things (including legitimate psychotherapy), there are existing safeguards from professional standards, medical ethics, practice guidelines etc. that prevent the use of futile and/or harmful treatments. Actual gay conversion therapy from genuine registered therapists is in practice nonexistent in the UK.

I do think we need better regulation of the whole talking therapy field, with better transparency and protection for clients and patients. But the best and most responsive protection against useless and dangerous treatments would come from research and regulation from within the field, with recourse to the usual types of legal redress in case of harm, not slow national implementation of legislation against specific therapies and treatments.

Anything outside of that system isn't "therapy", really, and most would either come under abuse of some kind (including religious abuse), or should be covered by freedom of belief — if somebody had for example a religious belief that being gay was wrong, and freely sought out religious counsel or advice (not therapy from a licensed or professionally registered practitioner) from a cleric who believed likewise, surely that's allowed? I don't think I'd want to ban people from having opinions I disagree with and discussing them with others who share those opinions as part of a broader framework.

We do need better protections against all kinds of harmful and coercive acts, including bad healthcare and religious abuse. But I think a specific conversion therapy ban might be a tacit admission of failure to properly regulate psychological and psychotherapeutic aspects of healthcare and protect those who seek such care, and failure to protect vulnerable members of society or act on abuse of vulnerable people in the community.

I'd like to ask Emily Sargent if she would have been happy with a counsellor who invited her to explore whether her attraction to other women was because she was in fact a man. Homosexuality, though not typical, is normal and harmless. It doesn't need to be ascribed to some pathology.
Second question for the writer - why did you keep going to see this woman? There must have been a part of her which agreed with the "therapist" that there was something wrong with her. That was what the therapist uncovered. I think it's very sad.

And YY to TipulophobiaIsReal

Presumably she was doing it as investigative journalism — I don't think it's fair to imply that she kept going because part of her agreed with the therapist.

While I think that a ban on gay conversion therapy would be plastering over the cracks of our system, and that bans on trans conversion therapy run the risk of distorting therapy in ways that prevent exploration and risk causing harm, I do believe there should be major changes in regulation, and that people should not be able to operate the way the individual described in the article does. Although I disagree with the writer on bans, I think that going undercover to report on this unscrupulous "therapy" was a courageous, admirable and valuable thing to do.

That's a dogs breakfast of an article. Most of the comments accurately point out the problems with so many conflations of different groups, ideological side swipes and the incoherence of someone going in to therapy under false pretences and then describing her subsequent feelings as unsettling.

@TipulophobiaIsReal
Point taken about the reason she kept going being her commitment to journalism.

However, I should reword - I meant the feeling of destabilisation could be due to her agreeing on some level that she was a lesbian because something had gone wrong. And as I said, I think it's sad, not blameworthy.

That's not the point of a discussion forum though?

If everyone just posted random articles with no context or opinion as threads, this would be a very dull place. Why would you share an article you haven't even read?

Here's a Wikipedia link about Winnie the Pooh. I haven't read it but you might like it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie-the-Pooh

Yeah I agree that she took a real risk there; lots of people who aren't straight (and I suppose lots who are) have had a complex journey to get where they are, and gone through a lot of painful processes that this kind of crap could easily re-fuck up.

Difference is virid,

1. I can read that Wikipedia article myself, whereas the OP gave me access to something I can't read freely, and

2. The OP's article is new and on topic for the forum and there's a high chance many here will want to read it once made aware. If this were an AA Milne board and that were a brand new Wikipedia article, it might make sense to post it with "Won't have time to read till this evening but this might interest some".

Things I took from this article: Talking about your relationship with your parents may be a red flag for possible conversion therapy "a method used by most so-called conversion therapists" (it's actually pretty standard in psychotherapeutic formulation to explore this)

That understanding current conflicts or difficulties in the context of previous experience including trauma is also a sign of conversion therapy "The counsellor's mission is to find the 'wound' or the trauma - a 'weak' father figure for example, or sexual trauma" - again, also pretty standard to seek to understand current difficulties in light of previous experience, especially but not only in psychodynamic therapy.

That the writer specifically asked on the first meeting if she could become straight and indicated she wanted to explore this - essentially a fishing exercise.
Whilst it does sound that the therapist had a view that being straight was preferable, what we don't know if that's because the journalist wanted this or because the therapist did, or both. The judgement / holding of a position that being LGB is wrong doesn't strike me as compatible with an exploratory approach. But should this be a matter for criminal courts or for training / supervision /complaint systems /regulatory bodies

Other questions I have - if someone is unhappy with their sexuality, is it ever ok to consider the question whether experience may have shaped it?

Should this therapist be in the dock over this encounter, or should therapists be better regulated, as tipulophobia suggests.

What effect would it have on the practice of psychotherapy as a whole if this therapist ended up convicted of conversion therapy?

The ‘journalist’ was acting in bad faith, though, by her own admission. She wasn’t unhappy with her sexuality, and she did not want to change her orientation. She lied about her experience of sexual abuse when asked, she could have said that she did not want to reply rather than tell a lie.

I don’t see how she can ‘judge’ the service offered at all, since she was not actually participating in it. She doesn’t seem to have been able to register any evidence of unpleasantness or accusation on the part of the therapist, who seems to have been just rather ineffectual. (Although it is hard to judge when the ‘patient’ is actually a stalking horse).

I agree that the whole business of unlicensed and unqualified therapists is a very dangerous area, I know from personal experience ( at second hand) that they can provide misleading and even harmful ‘advice’. What can be done though when so many people want to outsource their problems, I suspect that if ‘banned’ it would pop up again in some different guise.

I must make it clear that I don’t think that gay people should feel any societal pressure to change their orientation, although if someone really wanted to for reasons of their own, should they be prevented from that exploration? Anyway, we all know this is nothing to do with gay people, it is just another attempt by the TRA to capitalise on the widespread acceptance of homosexuality. ( which I supported long before it was popular ).

That counsellor will have been a Christian counsellor, and probably an evangelical (see her comment about her 'faith' the client could become straight). There is a huge problem with homophobia in many evangelical churches, which I have mainly seen manifest in gay and lesbian people being pressured into life long celibacy or straight marriages. Its truly disgusting.

Of course, we also know that there is problem with religious people, communities and countries who are homophobic, preferring people to 'transition' so they can appear straight, thus removing the stigma/sin of being gay.

The thing is, if someone says they are gay, there is no harm from them being gay or lesbian. Even in the unlikely event, though I have known it happen, of them later changing their mind. You can change your mind on being gay or lesbain and no harm has occurred at all. If someone says they are trans and wants to medically transition, they are going to become a life long medical patient and have life long consequences. Which is why we need to be sure that person is making the right decision. Especially as we know feelings of GD can be caused by things other than a life long condition of GD. We know if can be caused by trauma and it can be caused by being same sex attracted, and in that case, normally resolves through puberty. We also know that some people prefer to manage their feelings of GD whilst living fully in their actual sex ( so without any transition).

Trans conversion has been lumped in with gay conversion for political purposes, and probably has been argued for by campaigners both as part of their agenda to equate being trans with being gay and to make their affirmation only model predominant, by crushing 'the opposition' ( as they must see it) with fear of prosecution.

Is there even any evidence of counsellors trying to 'convert' people out of being trans? Does this even exist?

So many posters saying clearly what I was fumbling towards. Thanks.

Just a thought... Abusive and coercive practices aside, I wonder if you could successfully prosecute someone for trans conversion therapy just because it wasn't affirmation-only.
A therapist questioning whether you really are homosexual, or encouraging you to find routes to dealing with the supposed trauma which turned you homosexual, processing it and thus achieving heterosexuality is attempting to change your sexual orientation (with/without your consent). But I'm not sure that a person who claims an opposite sex gender identity is necessarily being challenged to change that through talking therapy. They (I assume, pure conjecture as I have no idea what happens in non-affirmation talking therapy sessions) might be invited to accept their sex, to find out if there are other reasons for feeling that it's wrong. On the surface, that last part sounds similar to gay conversion therapy, but the person claiming a trans identity doesn't have to renounce it for the therapy to be successful. I'm thinking here of some old school transsexuals and some younger people who would call themselves "trans". They accept their sex has not changed, that many others will not see them as the sex they would like to be - all the while still retaining the feeling of being different to others of their sex. The aim of talking therapy is to help the patient live with their feelings and not do unnecessary harm to themselves.

The ‘journalist’ was acting in bad faith, though, by her own admission

Quite. And why is it labelled "first person"? It isn't. She pretended to be in need of counselling. She even characterises what she did as going undercover. It's misleading. I wonder if this is worthy of a complaint to the regulator, in fact.

Not only did the “journalist” go in with bad faith, she didn’t even allow the therapist to explore the sexual abuse she had experienced and whether that might have contributed to her sexuality. It’s not impossible that trauma might play a part in who we find attractive in some cases. She lied, thus rendering the whole process pointless.

If she actually wanted to explore her sexuality and the therapist was indeed open to the end result being that the patient concluded they wanted to continue in same sex relationships (she apparently said this) then what we are being told is the story of someone going into an encounter with a completely set mind over the outcome, who was looking to find fault.

It’s not journalism. A real journalist would have gone in, perhaps with an idea, but also with an open mind. This was simply an exercise in anti-conversion therapy activism. The fact that she found it so unsettling suggests she does still have some underlying problems that she is unwilling to address. Maybe dredging it up really wouldn’t be helpful, but the whole “experiment” was a pointless waste of everyone’s time.