DR. NICOLOSI’S BELIEFS

For many years, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, Sr. assisted hundreds of clients with their goal to reduce their same-sex attractions and explore their heterosexual potential.

A licensed clinical psychologist, he believed that our bodies tell us who we are, and that our bodies have made us for heterosexuality.

Homosexuality, he believed, is an adaptation to trauma; it is rooted in a same-sex attachment problem that leaves the boy alienated from his masculine nature.

Dr. Nicolosi did not label this condition a "psychological disorder." However, in his view, homosexual development not only works against our biological design, but it leaves repercussions throughout the personality. In his work with hundreds of men over the years, he saw how homosexual development distorted his clients' understanding of gender. It also interfered with their ability to develop non-erotic relationships with men.

Most of his therapeutic work with clients had very little to do with sex; it centered, in fact, on helping his clients develop comfortable, non-erotic male friendships characterized by mutuality and equality.

Dr. Nicolosi began this work in 1981 as the originator of reparative therapy®. Reparative therapy is not the same as “conversion therapy.” It has nothing to do with shaming the client, forcing any kind of change, alienating families, or giving clients “shock treatments and nausea-inducing drugs,” as activists claim. Also, reparative therapy was never intended for people who identify as gay and are content with their gay-self-identification. It was aimed at people who do not identify with their same-sex attractions.

Dr. Nicolosi's clients would tell him the following: “I know, on some deep level, that I'm a heterosexual man. But I'm troubled by homosexual attractions that prevent me from being who I really am." They see brotherly, non-sexualized masculine relationships as their birthright. They long to develop the masculine energy within themselves which they have been sexualizing and romanticizing in other men.

Many men were victims of homosexual sexual abuse. They didn't believe that "gay" could ever describe them. But that childhood experience left them with attractions that they found compelling, although ultimately not satisfying. These feelings interfered with their values, their marriages, and deeply held beliefs.

There are many other factors of childhood that can lead a man down a homosexual path. Some men had a negative experience with women (such as a disempowering mother) that blocked them from being attracted to females. Others failed to make a strong connection with their fathers, and in adulthood, they romanticized maleness.

Still others successfully made the initial bond with their fathers, but the father was not effective enough to protect the boy from the trauma of a “crazy-making” mother; the boy then developed a longing for a salient man to intervene and "rescue" him, which became eroticized as he grew older. But these men never considered themselves gay.

The legitimate therapist will not simply accept at face value, the client’s gay feelings. He must always ask “why,” rather than locking the client into an unwanted gay self-identification.

Dr. Nicolosi Sr.’s work ended when he passed away suddenly in March of 2017. But his books are still available, and therapists remain who are continuing some aspects of his original pioneering work.