Please - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Please

…

Make Me Not Gay

Working with the Client who is Conflicted about their Minority Sexuality

or Gender IdentitySlide2

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 SponsorshipSlide3

Different Clients

Different ConflictsSlide4

CONFLICT

Who is Your Whole Client?

What are the parts of them that are in conflict?Slide5

Externalised

and

Internalised

Oppressions

Slide6

Abuse survivors and distrust of own sexual feelings or identity

Slide7

Cultural Conflicts

Slide8

Religiously Committed Individuals and

Spiritual Reconciliation

Slide9

Pathologising

of Different Sexual Pleasure and Practice

Slide10

Impact on and from spouses, children, family and

communitySlide11

Bisexuality

and Sexual FluiditySlide12

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 knowledgeSlide13

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

b

y 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 ethicsSlide14

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”Slide15

I sleep with men

I am a bad father

Centered Self

Establish a position of “Centered Self”

Create positions to either side that hold the two pieces of the “equivalence” or “effect”

Explore the two positions somatically by standing in them separately. Return to

centre

in whatever way is helpful. Notice any new information or possibility. Slide16

The

Tetralemma

– 4 Point Reality Check

Gregory Bateson

The Belief is True

Because I sleep with men / I am a bad father

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

Neither is True

Both are TrueSlide17

Walking the

Tetralemma

Developed by Stephen Gilligan from work by Gregory Bateson

Neither is True

The Contrary is True

Both are True

The Belief is True

Centered

Open

Attending with Awareness

Connecting

HoldingSlide18

Clip 1

Channel 4 NewsSlide19

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?

Ethically Stopping “Conversion”

or “Reparative”

Therapy

Why not just ban the bigots!Slide20
Slide21
Slide22

Strategies for Change –

Must Maintain Ethical and Legal Consistency

Overarching International Convention (UN, ECHR)

National or State Law

Local Codes of EthicsSlide23

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 Slide24

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

.Slide25

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 MitigationSlide26

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 ?Slide27

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 NumberSlide28

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.

The development from deontology to consequentialism revealed how much disparity of pain and pleasure was between a privileged few and those excluded from power.Slide29

Consequentialism

Guidelines and Principles

Moral Good is Promotion of Happiness

Moral Bad is Causing of Pain

Acts are judged by Consequences

The Ends

J

ustify The MeansSlide30

Ethical Hedonism

Judge an act by its Consequences

The Ends of Increase of Pleasure and Reduction of Pain

measure the goodness of actionsSlide31

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 pleasuresSlide32

Strategies for Change –

Must Maintain Ethical and Legal Consistency

Overarching International Convention (UN, ECHR)

National or State Law

Local Codes of EthicsSlide33

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?Slide34

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.Slide35

Clip 2

The Sissy Boy ExperimentsSlide36

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

Evidenced Based or Fraudulent?Slide37

Reparative therapy exists within an energetic movement to recruit clients by using current clients to testify to change.

Exploitative?

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.Slide38

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.

Do No Harm?Slide39

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?

Autonomous?Slide40

Repeated failure to change orientation has lead to more and more extreme “treatments”, that would not be attempted for any other “condition”.

Comparable with Other Rational Experimentation in Pursuit of Knowledge and Better Practice?Slide41

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

.

Providing for Racial, Cultural or Religious Rights?Slide42

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.

Freedom of Speech and Religious Expression as protected within Human Rights Law?Slide43

C

laims

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.

Competent and Effective?

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.Slide44

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 lawsSlide45

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?Slide46

Clip 3

Leaders of Exodus ApologiseSlide47

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

create@beeleaf.com