Joseph Nicolosi

Joseph Nicolosi (January 24, 1947 – March 8, 2017) was an American clinical psychologist who advocated and practised "reparative therapy", a form of the pseudoscientific treatment of conversion therapy that he claimed could help people overcome or mitigate their homosexual desires and replace them with heterosexual ones. Nicolosi was a founder and president of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). Medical institutions warn that conversion therapy is ineffective and may be harmful, and that there is no evidence that sexual orientation can be changed by such treatments.

Quotes

The Gay Deception

• A "homosexual" is anyone who experiences a sexual attraction to persons of the same sex. [...] "Gay" is a self identity chosen by some homosexuals, [...] the idea that homosexual behavior is as normal and natural as heterosexual behavior.
  • p. 25

• The person who accepts the gay label in adulthood has typically spent much of his childhood emotionally disconnected from people, particularly his male peers and his father. He also was likely to assume a false, rigid "good little boy" role within the family.
  • p. 28

• The pre-homosexual boy is detached, not only from father and other boys, but from maleness and his own male body, including the first symbol of masculinity, his own penis…Homosexual behavior is the search for the lost masculine self. [...] By the early teenage years, unconscious drives to fill this emotional vacuum – to want to connect with his maleness – are felt as homoerotic desires. The next stage will be entry into the gay world.
  • p. 29

External links

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