"Richard Cohen, now married with three kids, is a leader in the so-called reparative therapy movement. With just more than 1,000 members it is not a particularly big movement, but because it's so controversial and despised within the gay community it tends to get a lot of attention.
...FEYERICK (voice-over): Cohen, who had several boyfriends, spent years in various kinds of therapy searching for answers. It wasn't until he remembered being sexually abused by a man when he was a child that what he calls his convergence process began,
COHEN: I knew it wasn't for me. I knew it in my gut I wasn't born this way.
FEYERICK: Cohen is an unlicensed therapist. He offers the theory that some kind of childhood trauma triggers homosexuality. All it takes is figuring out what it is, healing from it and moving on. One of his clients is a 42 year old program analyst who we'll call Rob. Because it is such a sensitive subject, he asked us to shield his identity.
He began seeing Cohen three years ago after years of struggling with unwanted homosexual feelings.
"ROB", CONVERSION THERAPY CLIENT: I had a mother that basically committed emotional incest with me because they had a very bad marriage. She used me as her husband, a stand-in.
FEYERICK: Cohen explains Rob's same-sex attraction is typical of the men he treats. Cold, distant dad, overbearing mom and overly sensitive kid. He showed us some of his unconventional techniques like touch therapy, in which he encouraging Rob to seek out same-sex mentors to basically re-create a healthy father-son bond.
He sits upright on a sofa, his client sprawls lengthwise for a close chest-to-chest embrace. The reporter does a sanity-check, asking the client if he feels aroused. Nope, just safe.
Cohen, saying that another key technique is designed to release memories embedded deeply in one's muscles, raises a tennis racquet above his head and bashes a pillow once for each word he screams at his mother."
anyway, although the topic of 'curing homosexuality' frightens me...i cracked up when the guy was wacking a pillow with his tennis racket and blaming his 'problem' on mommy.
__________________ "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
-Voltaire
"That includes ruining Halloween because someone swallowed a Bible."
"I just thought you were a guy."
"... Most guys do."
KMC Community Forums
Curing Homosexuality...with a tennis racket and hugs from men
Jun 2nd, 2006 07:03 PM
