Transcript Who is Your Whole Client?

Please…
Make Me Not Gay
Working with the Client
who is Conflicted about
their Minority Sexuality
or Gender Identity
Overview

Different Clients, Different Conflicts

Working through Cognitive-Somatic of Conflict

The First Session – What is our Alliance?

Ethics and Developing Better Legislation

Role Models, Mentors and Self Sponsorship
Different Clients
Different Conflicts
Who is Your Whole Client?
What are the parts of them
that are in conflict?
Externalised
and
Internalised
Oppressions
Abuse
survivors
and
distrust of
own sexual
feelings or
identity
Cultural
Conflicts
Religiously
Committed
Individuals
and Spiritual
Reconciliation
Pathologising of
Different Sexual
Pleasure and
Practice
Impact on and
from spouses,
children, family
and community
Bisexuality and
Sexual Fluidity
The little understood but real occurrence
of dissociative identities
These occur on a spectrum
ranging across compulsivity
of some sexual behaviours
to the very rare extreme of
Dissociative Identity
Disorder.
This spectrum would
normally be treated by a
therapist with specialist
experience and knowledge
What Additional Features might be
Necessary to the Initial Alliance?
• Willing to discuss your experience and training with GSDs, sexuality,
human development et cetera
• Resources for psycho-education, such as reading and links to websites
• A clear verbal (or written) statement of how the gender or sexual
diversity they are conflicted about is regarded by appropriate
authorities. For example, is it legal? Is it a natural variant of human
sexuality and identity? Is it pan cultural?
• Informed consent regarding the harm and ineffectiveness of therapy
which tries to change sexual orientation or gender identity towards
some pre-conceived ideal or norm
• A clear statement that you are willing to work with them and help
them through their process but that you will only practice in a way
which complies with good therapy practice and ethics
Practice
Identify the linguistic structure of the conflict.
Equivalence
X is the same as Y,
X =Y
“If I sleep with men I am a bad father/muslim/man”
Or
Cause and Effect
X causes Y,
XY
“If I sleep with men it will make my family/god/people reject me”
Establish a position of “Centered Self”
Create positions to either side that hold the two
pieces of the “equivalence” or “effect”
I sleep
with men
Centered
Self
I am a bad
father
Explore the two positions somatically by standing in
them separately. Return to centre in whatever way is
helpful. Notice any new information or possibility.
The Tetralemma – 4 Point Reality Check
Gregory Bateson
1. The Belief is True
Because I sleep with men / I am a bad father
2. The Contrary to the Belief is True
Because I don’t sleep with men / I am a good
father
Because I sleep with men / I am a good father
Because I don’t sleep with men / I am a bad father
3. Neither is True
4. Both are True
Walking the Tetralemma
Developed by Stephen Gilligan from work by Gregory Bateson
Neither is
True
The Belief is
True
Centered
Open
Attending with
Awareness
Connecting
Holding
Both are
True
The Contrary
is True
Clip 1
Channel 4 News
Ethically Stopping “Conversion”
or “Reparative” Therapy
Why not just ban the bigots!
Is it as simple as “banning”
therapists who have religious, or
secular, beliefs that being gay is a
sickness or a sin?
Why not?
Why can’t an ethical body simply
ban people who they believe are
bigots?
Strategies for Change –
Must Maintain Ethical and Legal Consistency
Overarching International
Convention (UN, ECHR)
National or State Law
Local Codes of Ethics
Deontology
Universally Applicable Rules
Following the Rules Keeps Us Moral
Breaking the Rules Results in Moral Peril
Acts are Good or Bad Regardless of Result
The Means are The Ends
Immanuel Kant
1724 – 1804
Categorical Imperative
We’ve already met Kant’s influence in his taxonomy of
empirical and intuitive knowing, which underlies any
study of subjective experience, including filtering
concepts into generalisations.
Kantian Ethics
Acts are categorically right or wrong in themselves
Universality
If something is ever wrong it is always wrong.
An act is only right if it is right for everyone to
act thus.
The Means are the End
We must act based on the act itself being good,
rather than in order to manipulate a good
consequence of the action.
Rational, Moral Authority
We are each supremely responsible for our
actions and judgments
Absolutes with No Context Sensitivities or Mitigation
What are your
categorical imperatives?
Are there any rules that you hold as absolutes?
How did you develop this maxim?
Experience ? Culture ? Family ? Intuition ?
Are there any exceptions ?
Jeremy Bentham
1748 – 1832
Utilitarianism
“Nature has placed mankind under the
governance of two sovereign masters,
pain and pleasure. It is for them alone
to point out what we ought to do, as
well as to determine what we shall do.
On the one hand the standard of right
and wrong, on the other the chain of
causes and effects, are fastened to their
throne. They govern us in all we do, in
all we say, in all we think.”
The Greatest Happiness for
The Greatest Number
The development from
deontology to consequentialism
revealed how much disparity of
pain and pleasure was between a
privileged few and those excluded
from power.
Abolition of Slavery, Abolition of Death Penalty,
Abolition of Physical Punishment including that of Children
Equality of Women, Right to Divorce,
Separation of Church and State, Freedom of Expression,
Individual and Economic Freedom, Decriminalisation of
Homosexuality
All of these inequalities were rationalised as being
the natural order, and in his time Bentham was a
considered eccentric beyond understanding.
Consequentialism
Guidelines and Principles
Moral Good is Promotion of Happiness
Moral Bad is Causing of Pain
Acts are judged by Consequences
The Ends Justify The Means
Ethical
Hedonism
Judge an act by its Consequences
The Ends of Increase of Pleasure
and Reduction of Pain
measure the goodness of actions
John Stuart Mill
1806 – 1873
Utilitarianism II
“The only purpose for which
power can be rightfully
exercised over any member of a
civilised community, against
his will, is to prevent harm to
others.”
Greatest Happiness Principle
includes qualitative higher value of
Moral pleasures
Strategies for Change –
Must Maintain Ethical and Legal Consistency
Overarching International
Convention (UN, ECHR)
National or State Law
Local Codes of Ethics
Reparative Therapists claim that they are a minority being persecuted for
their religious or moral beliefs against “homosexuality”. They say clients
have a right to treatment for this dangerous ailment
Making a special
exception – unequal
treatment due to the
“gay agenda”
Honouring Parents’ and
Client’s Autonomy
Reducing Harm from
the “Lifestyle”
Does its practice incur
generic ethical violations?
Is it autonomous?
Is it informed?
Does it work?
Is it harmful?
Valid therapeutic
methods?
Is it a religious right?
Better alternatives?
It violates our
democratic
freedoms to ban
something simply
because a
sincerely held
“ethical system”
or belief is a
minority view.
We must prove
that actions based
on that view
violate irrefutable
maxims.
Clip 2
The Sissy Boy Experiments
Evidenced Based or Fraudulent?
The National Association for Research and Treatment of
Homosexuality have been shown to repeatedly misuse
research to make claims of both the pathology of sexual and
gender minority and in claims of successful treatment
Exploitative?
Reparative therapy exists
within an energetic
movement to recruit
clients by using current
clients to testify to
change.
In reality, publicly testifying that you are cured is
part of the “treatment”, so many “success stories”
are of people who later renounce any claim to
change and feel emotionally and financially
exploited.
Do No Harm?
Installing religious
doctrine over natural
human diversity sets
up intolerable inner
conflict
Suggesting that being gay is a
sickness, from an
authoritative position,
colludes with discrimination
that already causes mental
distress.
Autonomous?
With shaming and
rejection from family,
bullying and exclusion
from society and
discrimination in work
and education, is a
person seeking to change
their orientation really
acting autonomously?
Are they not being
threatened and coerced
by people who see
bullying as “natural
ethical instinct” in
children and a healthy
normative pressure?
Comparable with Other Rational Experimentation in
Pursuit of Knowledge and Better Practice?
Repeated failure to change orientation has lead to more
and more extreme “treatments”, that would not be
attempted for any other “condition”.
Providing for Racial, Cultural or Religious Rights?
Claims that to practice
Reparative Therapy is a
religious and cultural
right, and that to not
allow it is racism and
persecution, do not
follow consistent
argument and are not
accepted across any
race, culture or religion.
Freedom of Speech and Religious Expression as
protected within Human Rights Law?
International human
rights law protects the
freedom of religious
expression provided that
doing so does not
violate the rights of, or
do harm to, others.
Competent and Effective?
Claims to change orientation have been revealed to be
false and all that is truly being offered are ways to repress
sexual urges and to create a heteronormative appearance
in dress, behaviour and to hide in unhappy marriages.
Those few who report a
lasting “cure” say the
difference that made the
difference was Jesus. If
true, this disqualifies the
change process from that
of therapeutic practice.
Overall Reparative Therapy has opened people’s eyes to the
realities of discrimination faced by sexual minorities.
It has also thrown up deep questions about moral systems that
are based on interpretation of divine laws
And it raises questions about irrational fears and hatred of
minority groups and whether in fact conditions like “homophobia”
are open to treatment…
And what moral violations would that cause?
Clip 3
Leaders of Exodus
Apologise
This presentation is offered to trainees
of BeeLeaf Institute and Pink Therapy as
revision material. The music and
pictures are included in good faith that
they will not be copied or distributed.
Anyone who wishes to use these slides
for training purposes or to share with
colleagues should in the first instance
contact Pam Gawler-Wright on
[email protected]