July 15, 2012

Tom Usher has written an article pointing out how Dr. Nicoloi’s letter to Alan Chambers has been taken out of context. Usher includes Nicolosi’s letter in the article, which he claims is the original source of its posting. Following are some excerpts from Usher’s article on TheRealLiberalChurch website:

“Much is being made of Dr. Nicolosi writing to Alan Chambers that he, Dr. Nicolosi, has said that he can’t ‘cure’ anyone of same-sex attraction. That is not to say that Dr. Nicolosi is saying that he has never treated anyone the results of which have been to-date arriving and remaining where the client is no longer sexually aroused by those of the same sex.”

“How could he though say that he can guarantee no backsliding, no new or returning confusion, no forgetting on the parts of all clients on how to think about the origins of their SSA, no lack of vigilance on the part of every client, or any single client, for all time going forward? That’s the context, not as the homosexualists are couching it by patently unfair insufficient consideration.”

“If Dr. Nicolosi can’t guarantee no temptation ever again, that does not destroy Reparative Therapy, per se, at all. If it were to, then most all of medicine and psychology would have to be thrown out, which of course, would be stupid.”

“The homosexualist psychologists attempting to get clients to be happy in their condition without ever having examined the causes do not guarantee that doubts will never arise again, do they? If they do, they’re more confused than their pro-homosexuality positions alone indicate.”

“Therefore, the homosexualists’ double-standard here is on full display and certain homosexualists deliberately collude to avoid making prominent the original source of this story (this post) or engaging in intelligent dialogue on the subject with Dr. Nicolosi or others who support RT [reparative therapy] and SOCE [sexual orientation change efforts], including me.”

Following is copy of the letter Tom Usher posted allegedly by Dr. Joseph Nicolosi to Alan Chambers:

Dear Alan:

It has been brought to my attention that you have posted the following comments on Facebook:

“As for Reparative Therapy, I do not support it. I don’t think it’s ‘fine’. They use pornography as a means of making people “100% straight”. We stopped allowing Joe Nicolosi to teach because he encouraged attendees to pick up heterosexual porn to encourage heterosexuality. Also, he and others have said that they can “cure” people 100% of SSA.”

Also–

“Joe Nicolosi and a few others are on record in workshops and other places saying that they employ pornography. We do not wish to slander Joe, but it is important for people to know that this is a part of the RT practice even if it wasn’t used in your therapy. This is a fact.”

Alan, what you are saying is untrue. I have never said I could cure someone completely from homosexuality. All my books make it quite clear that homosexual attractions will persist to some degree throughout a person’s lifetime.

Furthermore, I do not use heterosexual pornography with my clients. I do ask them (if they wish to do this; some clients do not, and I never expect my clients to do anything they do not wish to do) to bring up a compelling image from gay porn that they wish to reduce the power of, and we work on diminishing its power (a technique with which we have had considerable success).

However, I do not use straight porn; I use pictures of women they find attractive in mainstream magazines and we work on developing a physical attraction to them, through their imagination, while looking at these non-pornographic pictures.

I would like you to set the record straight on this. You have been publicly denigrating reparative therapy and misleading people about its nature.

If homosexual acts truly constitute sin, as you say you believe, then people deserve to be able to avail themselves of all reasonable therapeutic tools to diminish unwanted SSA and explore their OSA potential. You are discouraging them from having such tools, and also as a Christian, you are reassuring them that they are OK whether they “fall” or not, which gives people very little reason to struggle against a condition which has very deeply negative implications for both themselves and for our culture.

Sincerely,
Joe
Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.
www.josephnicolosi.com