Conferência: Co-adopção em pares do mesmo sexo: Afinal qual é o mal?

A psicóloga M. José Vilaça fala sobre Teologia do Corpo, ideologia do género e trauma pós-aborto

Nicholas Cummings, antiguo presidente de la American Psychological Association: «Conozco cientos de homosexuales que han cambiado su orientación»

El doctor Nicholas Cummings, que fue presidente de la American Psichological Association, ha presentado su testimonio como experto en un proceso judicial que tiene lugar en New Jersey respecto a las terapias para cambiar la orientación sexual.

"Cientos" han cambiado
Cummings asegura que él ha atendido personalmente a unos 2.000 homosexuales (por distintas causas), que su equipo a tratado a otros 16.000, y que conoce "cientos" que han cambiado de orientación sexual con éxito.

"Yo defiendo la autodeterminación del paciente. Creo y enseño que los gays y lesbianas tienen derecho a ser reafirmados en su su homosexualidad, y también creo que tienen derecho a buscar ayuda para cambiar su orientación sexual si ese es su deseo", asegura Cummings.

Los homosexuales que acuden a sus servicios y los de su equipo buscan ayuda psicológica en tres campos:

- problemas en sus relaciones
- buscan ayuda para aceptar sus sentimientos o identidad homosexuales
- o piden cambiar su orientación sexual

Cummings señala que son relativamente pocos los que piden cambiar de orientación sexual, y suelen afirmar que su deseo es tener una familia tradicional y que ven con disgusto un estilo de vida gay que han experimentado o percibido como promiscuo, lleno de relaciones frágiles, enfermedades e inseguridad. De los que intentan cambiar, Cummings asegura que "cientos" lo han conseguido y viven una vida heterosexual normal.

No es como la raza: puede cambiar
"Decir que toda atracción por el mismo sexo es inmutable o incambiable, como la raza, es una distorsión de la realidad. Acusar de fraude a los profesionales que aportan tratamientos a personas informadas que buscan el cambio no es correcto. Esta táctica sólo sirve para estigmatizar al profesional y avergonzar al paciente", escribe Cummings. "No se debería permitir que una agenda política impida ejercer su autodeterminación a gays y lesbianas que desean esforzarse en cambiar su orientación sexual", añade.

Judíos que ofrecen sanación
Cummings participa como experto y testigo en el caso del SPLC contra la asociación JONAH (Judíos Ofreciendo Nuevas Alternativas para la Sanación). JONAH es una asociación de terapeutas judíos que ofrecen ayuda a las personas que quieren dejar de experimentar atracción por su mismo sexo.

El SPLC es un organismo privado que les ha denunciado por "fraude al consumidor", por ofrecer un cambio en la orientación sexual, declarando que la orientación queda fijada en el nacimiento y no se puede cambiar con terapia. Los abogados de JONAH, que pertenecen al Fondo de Defensa de la Libertad de Conciencia, argumentan que no está demostrado que la orientación sexual no se pueda cambiar, y que hay muchas evidencias médicas que prueban lo contrario, que el cambio sí es posible.

Ilegalizar el libre debate
Los abogados afirman que en el SPLC "saben que hay estudios que demuestran que el cambio en la orientación sexual es posible, pero quieren que el tribunal declare que afirmar que la orientación sexual puede cambiar es un acto ilegal, un engaño, un fraude. Quieren usar el tribunal para cerrar un debate científico haciendo que una de las posturas del asunto sea literalmente ilegal".

The (Complete) Lack of a Scientific Basis for Banning Sexual-Orientation Change Efforts with Minors onference Agenda - By Christopher Rosik, Ph.D.

In NARTH 

Claims by Sen. Lieu and SB 1172 of widespread harms to minors

from SOCE represent rhetoric, not research.

"The attack on parental rights is exactly the whole point of the bill because we don't want to let parents harm their children," he said. "For example, the government will not allow parents to let their kids smoke cigarettes. We also won't have parents let their children consume alcohol at a bar or restaurant."

-- California State Sen. Ted Lieu, as quoted by the Orange County Register, August 2, 2012

Introduction

            Sponsored by state Senator Lieu (D-Torrance), California Senate Bill 1172, which will prohibit mental health professionals from engaging in SOCE with minors under any conditions, appears on its way to the desk of Governor Brown and could very well become state law.   The most important revision to the bill reads as follows:

865.2 - Any sexual orientation change efforts attempted on a patient under 18 years of age by a mental health provider shall be considered unprofessional conduct and shall subject a mental health provider to discipline by the licensing entity for that mental health provider.

As is plainly evident, should SB 1172 become law, licensed therapists in California who would otherwise be willing to assist minor clients in modifying their unwanted same-sex attractions and behaviors will be seriously jeopardizing their professional livelihoods. In defense of this bill's clear intent to intimidate therapists and supplant the rights of parents, Sen. Lieu has publicly compared the harms of SOCE to minors with those of alcohol and cigarettes. This comparison certainly sounds like a compelling analogy and clearly implies there is a conclusive body of scientific evidence behind the legislation.

            But like so many claims of SB 1172 supporters, this analogy seems to have been accepted at face value. Since Sen. Lieu's claim can be subjected to empirical verification by searching relevant databases, I decided to conduct such a search. Assuming the scientific basis for banning SOCE with minors is similar to that of banning cigarettes and alcohol, we should expect that the number of articles in the scientific literature for each of these health concerns would be roughly equivalent.

Procedure and Results

            To test this hypothesis, I conducted a search of the PsycARTICLES and MEDLINE databases. PsycARTICLES is a definitive source of full text, peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific articles in psychology, including the nearly 80 journals published by the American Psychological Association. MEDLINE provides authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, and other related fields covering more than 1,470 journals. I searched all abstracts from these databases using combinations of key words best suited to identify studies related to the question of interest. Below are the totals for articles on cigarettes and alcohol (words preceding an asterisk indicate that the search included all words with that stem, so that a search for "minor*" would include both "minor" and "minors").

Key Words                                 Total Articles                           Earliest Article

Children & Alcohol                            4465                                         1917

Children & Cigarettes                         883                                          1970

Adolescent* & Alcohol                      6180                                          1917

Adolescent* & Cigarettes                  1252                                          1971

Minor* & Alcohol                              2670                                          1944   

Minor* & Cigarettes                            356                                          1973

            These totals make clear that the literature regarding youth as related to alcohol and cigarettes is extensive, with studies numbering in the thousands. With such a sizeable database, one could reasonably expect that observations relative to the harms of cigarettes and alcohol among youth reflect reliable scientific information that has been replicated in numerous ways. These results, then, form the standard by which we can evaluate the volume of scientific literature from which any claims about SOCE and youth are based.

            Since SOCE is a relatively new term in the literature, I also conducted searches utilizing the terms "reparative therapy," "conversion therapy," and "sexual reorientation therapy," which were in use long before SOCE was coined. My extensive search of the databases to identify scientific literature supportive of Sen. Lieu's comparison yielded the following findings:

Key Words                                                         Total Articles                Earliest Article

Children & Sexual OrientationChange Efforts                 (0)                                ---

Children & Reparative Therapy                                      (0)                                ---

Children & Conversion Therapy                                     (0)                                ---

Children & Sexual Reorientation Therapy                       (0)                                ---

Adolescent* & Sexual Orientation Change Efforts           (0)                                ---

Adolescent* & Reparative Therapy                                (1)                               2010

Adolescent* & Conversion Therapy                               (0)                                 ---

Adolescent* & Sexual Reorientation Therapy                 (0)                                 ---

Minor* & Sexual Orientation Change Efforts                   (0)                                 ---

Minor* & Reparative Therapy                                         (0)                                 ---

Minor* & Conversion Therapy                                        (0)                                 ---

Minor* & Sexual Reorientation Therapy                          (0)                                 ---

Sexual Orientation Change Efforts & Harm                     (0)                                 ---

Reparative Therapy & Harm                                           (1)                                2010

Conversion Therapy & Harm                                          (1)                                2002

Sexual Reorientation Therapy & Harm                            (0)                                   --

Homosexual* & Psychotherapy & Harm                         (1)                                1977

Gay & Psychotherapy & Harm                                      (1)                                 1996

Lesbian & Psychotherapy & Harm                                 (0)                                   ---

Bisexual & Psychotherapy & Harm                                (0)                                   ---

          In stark contrast to the thousands of articles related to alcohol and cigarette usage by youth, my search of the scientific literature for references that would back up Sen. Lieu's claims yielded a total of four articles. Interestingly, three of these articles were not research-oriented. Hein and Matthews (2010) discussed the potential harms of reparative therapy for adolescents but cited no direct research on SOCE with adolescents to support their concerns. They relied instead primarily on adult anecdotal accounts and did not distinguish between the provision of SOCE by licensed clinicians and unlicensed religious practitioners. Jones (1996) described a case of self-harm by a young gay man in response to "profound" and "thematic" relationship difficulties. The author reported that psychodynamic therapy was beneficial in helping the patient deal with relational conflict without making any mention of internalized homophobia or stigmatization.

            Hochberg (1977) discussed her treatment of a suicidal adolescent male who finally disclosed his homosexual experience as termination neared. After this disclosure, Hochberg reported that, "Therapy subsequently exposed long-standing inhibitions in masculine assertiveness, longing for a love object that would increase his masculinity, (and allay his homosexual anxiety) and intense fear of physical harm" (p. 428). This article, then, would in some respects appear to provide anecdotal support for SOCE, not surprisingly coming in an era before reports of harm gained favored status over reports of benefit within the psychological disciplines.

            The only article my database search identified that could be considered quantitative research was Shidlo and Schroeder's (2002) well-known study on reported harms from SOCE. The Shidlo and Schroeder study suffered from many methodological limitations, including recruiting specifically for participants who had felt harmed by their SOCE, obtaining recollections of harm that occurred decades prior to the study, and not distinguishing between SOCE provided by licensed mental health professionals and unlicensed religious counselors. As the authors correctly acknowledged, the findings of this study can not be generalized beyond their specific sample of consumers. This research can therefore tell us nothing about the prevalence of harm from SOCE provided by licensed therapists.

Discussion

            In an effort to corroborate the scientific accuracy of Sen. Lieu's comparison between the harms to minors of cigarettes, alcohol, and SOCE, I conducted a search of one major medical database and one main mental health database associated with the American Psychological Association. Results from this analysis revealed that the literature related to youth and cigarettes or youth and alcohol numbered in the thousands while studies relating directly to SOCE with minors appeared to be non-existent. While the utilization of different sets of related key words might yield slightly different totals with additional database searches, it seems highly unlikely the results would differ in any substantive fashion. Consequently, I have to conclude from this investigation that Sen. Lieu's comparison lacks merit scientifically and therefore SB 1172's prohibition of SOCE on the basis of harms to minors lacks a clear scientific justification.

            Some additional observations from this investigation seem worth noting. First, the case against SOCE with minors is typically based on four sets of data: anecdotal accounts of harm (mostly from adults), a very few quantitative studies (compilations of anecdotal accounts from adults with severe methodological limitations), inferences from other research domains of questionable relatedness to SOCE (e.g., harms from family rejection of gay youth), and citations of the pronouncements on SOCE from professional mental health and medical associations. These various sources tend to cite one another in an almost symbiotic manner that provides little if any new information relevant to answering important questions about SOCE.

            It seems the science as pertains to SOCE is stuck in neutral and the professional associations and critics of SOCE do not appear interested in doing any cooperative research with proponents of SOCE that might actually move our understanding forward. With SOCE on the defensive, those within government and public university settings in a position to make large scale scientific contributions to this literature appear content to speak out of both sides of their mouths. On the one hand, they demand rigorous empirical support for SOCE but on the other hand they display no interest in facilitating bipartisan research that could potentially address their demands. One could make the case that this is hardly a shining moment in the history of social scientific integrity.

            Secondly, the lack of a clear and direct grounding in the scientific literature for the claims of harm to youth from SOCE lend credence to the suspicion that political rather than scientific motivations are the driving force behind SB 1172. Reasonable clinicians and mental health association representatives should agree that anecdotal accounts of harm constitute no basis upon which to prohibit a form of psychological care. If this were not the case, the practice of any form of psychotherapy could place the practitioner at risk of regulatory discipline, as research indicates 5-10% of all psychotherapy clients report deterioration while up to 50% experience no reliable change during treatment (Hansen, Lambert, & Forman, 2002; Lambert & Ogles, 2004). What may be at play among supporters of SB 1172 is a dislike for how many SOCE therapists view same-sex attractions, i.e., as a developmental adaptation. It would certainly be a new and sobering development if approaches to psychological care can now be prohibited on the basis of disputed aspects of its theory rather than on a scientifically established prevalence of harm that significantly exceeds those of other therapeutic approaches.

           

          Without a basis in the scientific literature, the claims by Sen. Lieu and SB 1172 of widespread harms to minors from SOCE represent rhetoric, not research. My database search suggests this is a superfluous piece of legislation from the perspective of harm. Any harm that might occur from the unprofessional practice of SOCE by licensed therapists can and should be handled within the existing regulatory structures on a case-by-case basis. But rather than take such a rational approach, SB 1172 supporters have politicized the issues in the form of this legislative overreach (Los Angles Times, May 11, 2012), declaring SOCE with minor ipso facto unprofessional conduct. They have thrown their anti-SOCE wish list against the proverbial wall in order to see what politicians and mental health associations would let stick. Sadly, the blanket prohibition of SOCE with minors appears to be sticking and may become law in California. If this occurs, the present analysis indicates it will be in the absence of scientific literature and not because of it.

References

Hansen, N. B., Lambert, M. J., & Forman (2002). The psychotherapy dose-response effect and its implications for treatment delivery services. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 9, 329-343. doi: 10.1093/clipsy.9.3.329

Hein, L. C., & Matthews, A. K. (2010). Reparative therapy: The adolescent, the psych nurse, and the issues. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, 23(1), 29-35. doi: 10.1111/j.1744-6171.2009.00214.x

Hochberg, R. (1977). Psychotherapy of a suicidal boy: Dynamics and interventions. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, and Practice, 14(4), 428-433.

Jones, A. (1996). An equal struggle (psychodynamic assessment following repeated episodes of deliberate self-harm). Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 3(3), 173-180.

Lambert, M. J., & Ogles, B. M. (2004). The efficacy and effectiveness of psychotherapy. New York, NY: Wiley.

Los Angles Times (May 11, 2012). Bill overkill in Sacramento. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/11/opinion/la-ed-0511-therapy-20120511

Shidlo, A., & Schroeder, M. (2002). Changing sexual orientation: A consumers' report. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 33(3), 249-259.

APA to eliminate gender identity disorder, replace with ‘gender dysphoria’ - by Meaghen Hale

August 13, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – You are born with an XY or an XX chromosome, primary characteristics that will objectively develop one genotype: male or female. But now you can choose whether to be male, female, or something else—and when the American Psychiatric Association releases their new manual, it will be perfectly normal.

In May 2013, the APA will publish the DSM-5, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. A significant change will be the reclassification of Gender Identity Disorder to “Gender Dysphoria.” “Dysphoria” is a word meaning “emotional distress.”

Proponents of the change believe it is a positive step, removing the stigma of mental illness from a group of people—not all of whom feel the need for psychological counselling. Critics, on the other hand, including one former president of the APA, maintain that the change is motivated by politics, rather than science.

“We know there is a whole community of people out there who are not seeking medical attention and live between the two binary categories,” said Jack Drescher, a member of the DSM-5 Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group. “We wanted to send the message that the therapist’s job isn’t to pathologize.”

Click “like” if you want to defend true marriage.

 

The APA website defines a psychological state as a mental disorder “only if it causes significant distress or disability.” It continues, “Many transgender people do not experience their gender as distressing or disabling, which implies that identifying as transgender does not constitute a mental disorder.”

Dana Beyer, who helped the Washington Psychiatric Society make recommendations on matters of gender and sexuality, told the AP, “a right-winger can’t go out and say all trans people are mentally ill because if you are not dysphoric, that can’t be diagnosed from afar. It no longer matters what your body looks like, what you want to do to it, all of that is irrelevant as far as the APA goes.”

But Dr. Anthony Duk, a psychiatrist at the Inland Psychiatric Medical Group in Riverside, California, and member of NARTH (National Association for Research to Treat Homosexuality), told LifeSiteNews that the APA’s reframing would result in potentially harmful self-diagnosis.

“When you move from disorder to dysphoria, which is upset feeling, you lose objectivity. You ask how the patient feels, if they think they are dysphoric. Those that think they have a problem have a problem; those that don’t think they have a problem don’t.”

According to Dr. Nicholas Cummings, former president of the APA and Chair of The Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Foundation, the problem with the redefinition is that it may limit how much help people with gender identity issues are able to seek—and how much psychologists are comfortable giving.

“I think that [psychologists] are afraid to address the topic directly with their patients because they fear there will be repercussions from the APA,” Dr. Cummings told LifeSiteNews. “They fear a malpractice suit. It limits their response [to patients].”

Dr. Cummings explained that the APA believes gender identity is immutable and any psychologist who tries to help a patient change it commits malpractice, “which is interesting as there are patients who seek change. Change is very difficult and happens only in a minority of cases…but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”

Dr. Duk expressed concern that under the APA’s new definition children, who could normally experience gender identity confusion until age eleven, will be offered medications that will delay puberty so they can decide their sex.

“Pharmaceutical companies are trying to make money off of something that is contrary to the use of science and the Hippocratic oath,” Dr. Duk said.

Dr. Cummings said that the APA’s redefinition “ is more of a political issue than it is scientific,” he said. “All this talk is based on politics, attitude—not science. If you try to be scientific, you choose to be a homophobe.”

“When treatment, whether psychological or medical, is determined by politics, it’s very frightening.”

El ex-presidente de la Asociación Americana de Psicología denuncia que la organización está tomada por el lobby gay

In InfoCatólica

El expresidente de la Asociación Americana de Psicología (APA), cree que la organización ha abandonado las buenas prácticas científicas para promover el estilo de vida homosexual como saludable y normal. En una reciente entrevista en video con un grupo de investigación sobre la homosexualidad, el Dr. Nicholas Cummings, que en su día votó a favor de no considerar dicha tendencia sexual como enfermedad, afirmó que «lo que necesitamos hacer es tener un diálogo abierto, sin tabúes, y ver a dónde nos lleva la investigación».

Para Cummings, esta investigación, desafortunadamente, no se está realizando, porque el lobby gay ha«capturado» la organización.

 

Además de servir como presidente de la APA de 1979 a 1980, Cummings participó en el Consejo de Representantes y la Mesa de Directores de este grupo, a principios y mediados de la década de 1970.

El mismo Cummings apoya a los gays y lesbianas e introdujo una resolución en 1975 para declarar que ser homosexual no era una enfermedad mental.

El reputado psicólogo señaló que dicha resolución, que fue aprobada «por amplio margen» en el Consejo de Representantes, también pidió a la APA continuar una «investigación imparcial, abierta» sobre el tema, pero esto «nunca fue hecho» debido a los cambios en la organización.

Cummings explicó que cuando él era presidente, la Asociación Americana de Psicología acataba el principio de Leona Tyler, que sostenía que el grupo nunca tomaría públicamente una posición si no fuera apoyada por evidencia científica.

Pero las cosas comenzaron a cambiar «bastante drásticamente» a fines de la década de 1980, según explicó, y para mediados de la década de 1990 este principio fundamental «estaba absolutamente olvidado».

«De repente, las decisiones se volvieron más políticas que científicas», dijo, indicando que aunque el principio de Leona Tyler nunca fue formalmente retirado, «desapareció» y no puede ser encontrado siquiera en las memorias de la organización.

Cummings recordó que «las posturas políticas parecían desautorizar cualquier resultado científico. Los resultados basados en evidencia incompleta se convirtieron en la modalidad, y el lobby gay capturó la APA».

El científico explicó que por muchos años, un grupo «muy selecto» de 200 a 250 miembros «dirigía la APA», rotando entre las oficinas de la organización, para eludir las normas que prohíben que individuos sirvan por más de un cierto número de sesiones en un mismo cargo.

Este selecto grupo no aceptaría ningún cuestionamiento de las declaraciones sobre la normalidad de la homosexualidad, señaló: «Se volvió un asunto de derechos civiles más que un tema científico».

Cummings dijo que él no se opone al «matrimonio» homosexual, y que fue de hecho «muy activo en ayudar a gays a ser aceptados en la APA». «Pero también respeto el derecho de discepar. Y eso no está permitido. Tú sólo puedes escuchar un lado del tema», lamentó.

El psicólogo explicó que la organización había hecho grandes esfuerzos para ser «comprensiva y abierta» y al hacer eso, «dejó la puerta abierta para gente que se apresuró y la usó» para propósitos políticos.

Para Cummings, si bien esta era «una idea muy elevada a nivel superficial», con el tiempo se convirtió en «un sesgo» dentro de la asociación, y añadió que «si tuviera que elegir ahora, vería la necesidad de formar una organización que reclute hombres, heterosexuales, que están insuficientemente representados hoy en la APA».

El científico dijo que el futuro de la Asociación Americana de Psicología es incierto, y explicó que el grupo ha perdido parte de su financiación y «está atravesando algunos cambios reales en este punto».

Los psicólogos clínicos están cada vez más decepcionados de que la organización no ha estado utilizando sus fondos para llevar a cabo la investigación que se esperaba, y por eso «la gente está dejando de lado su afiliación».

Cummings pidió una investigación honesta sobre la homosexualidad, que esté abierta a abrazar los resultados científicos, cualesquiera que sean.

«Si nosotros tenemos un diálogo abierto, estaremos mucho más cerca en los próximos cinco años a una solución para todo esto. Pero ahora mismo, estamos en un momento de confusión», subrayó.

The social sciences cannot settle the moral status of homosexuality - by Stanton L. Jones

In First Things

Many religious and social conservatives believe that homosexuality is a mental illness caused exclusively by psychological or spiritual factors and that all homosexual persons could change their orientation if they simply tried hard enough. This view is widely pilloried (and rightly so) as both wrong on the facts and harmful in effect. But few who attack it are willing to acknowledge that today a wholly different, far more influential, and no less harmful set of falsehoods—each attributed to the findings of “science”—dominates the research literature and political discourse.

We are told that homosexual persons are just as psychologically healthy as heterosexuals, that sexual orientation is biologically determined at birth, that sexual orientation cannot be changed and that the attempt to change it is necessarily harmful, that homosexual relationships are equivalent to heterosexual ones in all important characteristics, and that personal identity is properly and legitimately constituted around sexual orientation. These claims are as misguided as the ridiculed beliefs of some social conservatives, as they spring from distorted or incomplete representations of the best findings from the science of same-sex attraction.

Today we approach same-sex attraction with views grounded in social and biological scientific perspectives that are only partially supported by empirical findings. Until the early decades of the twentieth century, moral disapproval of “sodomy” guided public policy, but that grounding was displaced by a psychiatric model that viewed homosexuality as a mental illness. Once homosexuality came to be seen not as a sin but as a sickness, it became a simple matter for social science to overturn the opposition to homosexual acts. Alfred Kinsey’s studies of male and female sexuality, published in 1948 and 1953, portrayed homosexual behavior of various kinds as a normal and surprisingly common variant of human sexuality. In 1951, Clellan Ford and Frank Beach published Patterns of Sexual Behavior, their famous study of diverse forms of sexual behavior, including same-sex behavior, across human cultures and many animal species; they suggested a widely shared “basic capacity” for same-sex behavior.

But the decisive blow to the mental-illness construal of homosexuality came from a single study in 1957. Psychologist Evelyn Hooker published findings that convincingly demonstrated that homosexual persons do not necessarily manifest psychological maladjustment. On the basis of Hooker’s work, and the findings of similar studies, in 1973 the American Psychiatric Association amended its designation of homosexual orientation as a mental illness.

To avoid misunderstanding the phenomenon of homosexuality, we must grapple with the Achilles heel of research into the homosexual condition: the issue of sample representativeness. To make general characterizations such as “homosexuals are as emotionally healthy as heterosexuals,” scientists must have sampled representative members of the broader group. But representative samples of homosexual persons are difficult to gather, first, because homosexuality is a statistically uncommon phenomenon.

A recent research synthesis by Gary Gates of the Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA Law School dedicated to sexual-orientation law and public policy, suggests that among adults in the United States, Canada, and Europe, 1.8 percent are bisexual men and women, 1.1 percent are gay men, and 0.6 percent are lesbians. This infrequency makes it hard to find participants for research studies, leading researchers to study easy-to-access groups of persons (such as visible participants in advocacy groups) who may not be representative of the broader homosexual population. Add to this the difficulty of defining homosexuality, of establishing boundaries of what constitutes homosexuality (with individuals coming in and out of the closet, and also shifting in their experience of same-sex identity and attraction), and of the shifting perceptions of the social desirability of embracing the identity label of gay or lesbian, and the difficulty of knowing when one is studying a truly representative sample of homosexual persons becomes clear.

With this caution in mind, we can now approach the broad beliefs shaping our culture. First, are homosexual persons as psychologically healthy as heterosexuals? Many believe so, and public representations of the scientific evidence support the belief. For instance, in 1986, in its amicus curiae brief for the Supreme Court case Bowers v. Hardwick, the American Psychological Association (APA) stated, erroneously, that “extensive psychological research conducted over almost three decades has conclusively established that homosexuality is not related to psychological adjustment or maladjustment.” Today, twenty-five years later, the association’s website still declares, after decades of research to the contrary, that “being gay is just as healthy as being straight.”

Evelyn Hooker, in her 1957 study, was careful to reject only the claim that homosexuality is always pathological. She never made the logically distinct assertion that homosexual persons on average are just as psychologically healthy as heterosexuals. It is well that she did not, because the consistent findings of the best, most representative research suggest the contrary, despite a few scattered compatible findings from smaller studies of less representative samples. One of the most exhaustive studies ever conducted, published in 2001 in the American Journal of Public Health and directed by researchers from Harvard Medical School, concludes that “homosexual orientation . . . is associated with a general elevation of risk for anxiety, mood, and substance-use disorders and for suicidal thoughts and plans.” Other and more recent studies have found similar correlations, including studies from the Netherlands, one of the most gay-affirming social contexts in the world. Depression and substance abuse are found to be on average 20 to 30 percent more prevalent among homosexual persons. Teens manifesting same-sex attraction report suicidal thoughts and attempts at double to triple the rate of other teens. Similar indicators of diminished physical health emerge in this literature.

Social stigma is the popular explanation, both in scientific studies and in mass media, for heightened psychological distress among homosexuals. The possibility that the orientation and all it entails cuts against a fundamental, gender-based given of the human condition, thus creating distress, is not raised. The correlation between social stigma and psychological problem is real, but the empirical case for the first causing the second has yet to be made. This has not stopped advocates, however, from battling alleged stigma by increasingly framing all “anti-gay sentiment” as a form of prejudice. This has led to the creation of new terminology: No matter how congruent with the scientific evidence, any belief that homosexuality is not a normal and positive variant of human sexuality is a manifestation of “homophobia” and “heterosexism,” a symptom of destructive “master narratives of normativity” (of which “heteronormativity” is a part).

Is homosexuality biologically determined at birth? A pervasive understanding is settling into Western culture that homosexual orientation, indeed any and all sexual orientations, has been proven by science to be a given of the human person and rooted in biology. Why does this falsehood—that homosexuality has been proven to have an exclusively biological cause—matter? It is the basis for asserting that sexual orientation is the same sort of characteristic as race or skin color, which has become, for instance, the foundational metaphor in the push for the right to marry someone of the same sex.

One reason it is generally believed that homosexuality is conclusively caused by biological factors is the supposed lack of a credible alternative. Two astonishing examples: The 2009 APA task force report on Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE), Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation, presents over and over as established “scientific fact” that “no empirical studies or peer-reviewed research supports theories attributing same-sex sexual orientation to family dysfunction or trauma.” Neuroscientist Simon LeVay, author of a major book on the science of same-sex attraction, in considering environmental and psychological factors influencing sexual orientation concludes that “there is no actual evidence to support any of those ideas.”

There are, in fact, many such studies and a lot of actual evidence. Recent studies show that familial, cultural, and other environmental factors contribute to same-sex attraction. Broken families, absent fathers, older mothers, and being born and living in urban settings all are associated with homosexual experience or attraction. Even that most despised of hypothesized causal contributors, childhood sexual abuse, has recently received significant empirical validation as a partial contributor from a sophisticated thirty-year longitudinal study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Of course, these variables at most partially determine later homosexual experience, and most children who experienced any or all of these still grow up heterosexual, but the effects are nonetheless real.

To say that psychological and environmental variables play a part in causation does not mean that biology does not, rather just not to the extent that many gay-affirming scholars claim. The two most influential contemporary theories of biological causation focus respectively on fraternal birth order and genetics; each has some level of support, but for modest-sized causal effects at best.

The fraternal birth order theory hypothesizes that some mothers develop something akin to an allergic reaction to their body’s encounter with the male hormones generated by their male fetus, and hence manifest a hormonal resistance against the masculinization process in the developing male fetus. Males who were the product of such wombs are incompletely masculinized. And it is posited that the more male children such mothers bear, the more profound their reactions and the greater the likelihood that the later-born sons will be homosexual. In short, the more older brothers, the more likely the younger brothers are to be homosexual. The actual evidence such an immunological reaction exists is minimal apart from the raw claim that gay men tend to have disproportionate numbers of older brothers. But do they?

Early studies claiming to demonstrate a disproportionate presence of older brothers among homosexual men were based upon advertisement-recruited, volunteer samples vulnerable to volunteer bias. As Anthony Bogaert and Ray Blanchard, the major proponents of this theory, multiplied their reports of this phenomenon, their larger and larger samples were created by folding new volunteer samples into a common pool with their original samples, thus creating larger and larger nonrepresentative samples.

Recently, Bogaert analyzed two nationally representative samples and found only an exceptionally weak older-brother effect, but only for same-sex attraction, not for same-sex behavior. Then he analyzed an independent and truly representative sample eight times the size of his previous studies, finding no older-brother effect. At roughly the same time, a study of two million Danes and another of 10,000 American teenagers both failed to find the effect. It is thus mystifying why many gay-affirming researchers still confidently assert, like Simon LeVay, “that gay men do have significantly more older brothers, on average, than straight men.”

If there is a genetic component to sexual orientation, then the more two people share their genetic endowment, the more likely they are to share the same sexual orientation. The then-moribund genetic theory received a huge boost from J. Michael Bailey’s famous 1991 study that recruited subjects through advertisements and posted announcements throughout Chicago’s gay community. Bailey examined three groups in descending order of genetic similarity: genetically identical twins, fraternal twins and non-twin brothers who are essentially 50 percent identical, and adopted siblings who have no particular genetic similarity. Bailey reported a widely misinterpreted 52 percent “concordance” for identical male twins, compared with 22 percent for fraternal twins, 9 percent for non-twin brothers, and 11 percent for adopted brothers. The results generated wide and simplistic media coverage. It had been settled, the media suggested: Sexual orientation was determined by one’s genes. What was not widely understood was that only in 14 of the 41 identical-twin pairs did the two twin brothers match for sexual orientation; in the remaining 27 sets the identical twin brothers did not match.

But the deeper problem with the study was again one of sample representativeness. What if individuals were more likely to volunteer for the study if they shared same-sex attraction with a sibling, and less likely to do so if they didn’t? Using a more representative sample from the Australian Twin Registry, Bailey in 2000 saw the concordance for identical male twins fall from 52 to a mere 20 percent, and the matching for homosexual orientation between each pair of identical male twins fell to a mere 3 out of 27 pairs (11.1 percent). The findings of Bailey’s new study failed to reach statistical significance. The ballyhooed genetic effect had shrunk considerably, a fact that failed, of course, to capture any media attention and is often left out of the textbook treatments of the subject. In 2010, an impressive and much larger study utilizing the Swedish Twin Registry produced almost identical results: Among the 71 pairs of identical male twins of whom at least one twin was gay, in only seven cases (9.8 percent) was the second twin also gay, yet another statistically insignificant result.

But the search for a genetic mechanism continues, using a more statistically powerful calculation, that of heritability, which estimates how much of the variability of sexual orientation may be attributed to genetic influences. The higher this estimate, the greater the suggested genetic contribution. The best recent studies consistently generate heritability estimates for male homosexuality of 30 to 50 percent, a statistically significant finding that sounds quite powerful. Heritability estimates for female homosexuality are slightly less than for males, but still statistically significant. But what do heritability estimates of 30 to 50 percent mean?

Behavior genetics has established heritability estimates for a vast array of psychological traits. Quite a number of traits demonstrate much higher heritability than does homosexual orientation. Those with roughly similar heritability include social attitudes such as right-wing authoritarianism, inclination to religiosity, and church attendance. One study by a giant of behavioral genetics, Robert Plomin, found that the proclivity to watch television has an average heritability estimate of 45 percent, on par with the typical estimate for the heritability of male homosexuality.

Contrary to the assumptions of many social conservatives, biology does appear to play a modest part in determining sexual orientation. Contrary to the assumptions of many social progressives, psychological and environmental variables also appear to play at least a modest part in determining sexual orientation. In contrast to the hubris of those prone to making emphatic pronouncements, what we do not yet know about the causation of sexual orientation dwarfs the bit that we are beginning to know. And the fact that causation is indubitably a complex and mysterious by-product of the interaction of biological and psychological variables confounds the assertion that sexual orientation is just like skin color, determined at birth or even conception. And contrary to the suggestions of some, the involvement of some biological influence does not prove that change in sexual orientation is impossible. One of our foremost behavior genetics experts, Thomas Bouchard, has argued forcefully that “one of the most unfortunate misinterpretations of the heritability coefficient is that it provides an index of trait malleability (i.e., the higher the heritability the less modifiable the trait is through environmental intervention).”

If some measure of heritability does not establish that the trait is not modifiable, what does the direct evidence show about change? Attorney General Eric Holder, explaining the Obama administration’s decision not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, repeatedly cited the “immutability” of sexual orientation: “A growing scientific consensus accepts that sexual orientation is a characteristic that is immutable.” The recent APA amicus brief for the Proposition 8 case is also forceful on the issue of change; contrary to claims that change is possible, they say, “research suggests the opposite.”

Has science established that sexual orientation cannot change? Dozens of scholarly papers appeared in journals from the 1940s to the early 1970s reporting that a substantial portion of those wanting to change homosexual orientation did change to some degree. But rarely since 1980 has a professional publication reported such results. Did science change direction and prove change impossible? Not quite.

Certainly, there has been lately less research of late studying the possibility of change. The removal in 1973 of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders both changed the political environment in the mental-health professions and undermined grant funding for research on this subject. Many academics no longer had any motivation to study this phenomenon and considerable political reasons not to do so. Further, prior published research is commonly dismissed as inadequate. The APA’s website stated for many years that claims that homosexual orientation can change “are poorly documented. For example, treatment outcome is not followed and reported over time as would be the standard to test the validity of any mental health intervention.”

Such criticism took its most comprehensive form in the report of the 2009 APA task force studying SOCE (sexual-orientation change efforts). These scholars set extraordinary standards of methodological rigor for what they regarded as a reasonable scientific study of the possibility of sexual-orientation change, a move that resulted in the classification of only six studies out of dozens as meriting close examination. These studies were, in turn, dismissed for a variety of reasons, leaving the panel with no credible findings, by their standards, documenting the efficacy of SOCE. After dismissing SOCE for its lack of empirical validation, the panel then recommended gay-affirming therapy while explicitly acknowledging that it lacked the very type of empirical validation required of SOCE.

In the absence of evidence, it would be proper scientific procedure to acknowledge one’s ignorance. The members of the APA task force claim that their review has established that “enduring change to an individual’s sexual orientation is uncommon” and “that it is unlikely that individuals will be able to reduce same-sex attractions or increase other-sex sexual attractions through SOCE.” But even more-forceful claims have been made. The Public Affairs website of the APA for many years stated, “Can therapy change sexual orientation? No,” and insisted that homosexuality “is not changeable.” But has science proven this? Not at all; rather, skeptical reviewers have dismissed evidence of the possibility of change for some on the basis of such studies being methodologically inadequate by post hoc and artificially stringent standards.

Is sexual orientation immutable? With Mark Yarhouse of Regent University, I recently studied people seeking to change their sexual orientation. We assessed the sexual orientations and psychological distress levels of 98 individuals (72 men, 26 women) trying to change their sexual orientation through ministries organized under Exodus International, beginning early in the process and following them over six to seven years with five additional, independent assessments. Our original round of findings was published in a book titled Ex-Gays?; the latest round, in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy.

Of the 61 subjects who completed the study, 23 percent reported success in the form of “conversion” to heterosexual orientation and functioning, while 30 percent reported they were able to live chastely and had disidentified themselves from homosexual orientation. On the other hand, 20 percent reported giving up and fully embracing homosexual identity, and the remaining 27 percent continued the process of attempted change with limited and unsatisfactory success. On average, statistically significant decreases in homosexual orientation were reported across the entire sample, while a smaller but still significant increase of heterosexual attraction was reported. The attempt to change orientation was not found to lead to increases in psychological distress on average; indeed, the study found several small significant improvements in psychological distress associated with the interventions. And lest we fall prey to the same mistakes we have been criticizing in others, we have said repeatedly that because our sample was not demonstrably representative of those seeking change among all religious homosexuals, these are likely optimistic outcome estimates.

I conclude that homosexual orientation is, contrary to the supposed consensus, sometimes mutable. “Homosexuality” is a multifaceted phenomenon; there are likely many homosexualities, with some perhaps more malleable than others. Not all interventions are the same; not all practitioners are equally skilled. Perhaps most important, those seeking change vary considerably in their intensity of motivation, in their resourcefulness, and in the context in which they try to change. Most of those seeking change and most of those who actually attain some level of change are highly religiously committed, and these individuals who believe in a God who intervenes in their lives are embedded in communities of care and are motivated by their core understanding of who they are as a person before God. It is a wonder that anyone without such resources successfully obtains sexual-orientation change.

Are homosexual relationships equivalent to heterosexual ones? In his ruling overturning Proposition 8, Judge Vaughn Walker cited UCLA psychologist Letitia Peplau’s testimony that “despite stereotypes suggesting gays and lesbians are unable to form stable relationships, same-sex couples are in fact indistinguishable from opposite-sex couples in terms of relationship quality and stability.” The APA’s brief for this case similarly claimed that “empirical research demonstrates that the psychological and social aspects of committed relationships between same-sex partners closely resemble those of heterosexual partnerships.” That brief relies upon the 2007 overview of research on same-sex relationships by Peplau and A. W. Fingerhut.

Here again we return to the issue of sample representativeness, which Peplau and Fingerhut handle with unfortunate evasiveness. They typically launch into discussions about various characteristics of homosexual couples without ever clearly stating that the studies they cite do not examine representative samples. They offer only intriguing hints that the studies on which they rely may be unrepresentative and hence potentially biased. They also raise in passing the provocative possibility that homosexual couples may bias their self-reports to look good.

Even so, intriguing hints of differences, of “nonequivalency,” between heterosexual and homosexual couples emerge from Peplau and Fingerhut’s survey. They mention one large study that found that 28 percent of lesbians had had sex outside their primary relationship—comparable to the 21 percent of women in relationships with men and 26 percent of men in relationships with women. By contrast, 82 percent of gay men had had sex with someone other than their main partner. However one construes such a striking difference in sexual monogamy, whether as a trivial stylistic difference or as indicative of something fundamental and pervasive, such a finding seriously challenges the equivalency hypothesis.

Stability is a relational characteristic of direct relevance to the types of functional concerns intrinsic, for instance, to evaluation for adoption fitness. How does equivalence look in this area? Peplau and Fingerhut cite one study that found that over a five-year period, 7 percent of married heterosexual couples broke up, compared with 14 percent of cohabiting male couples and 16 percent of cohabiting lesbian couples. They also summarize, without mentioning specific numbers, a more representative study from Norway and Sweden, which have sanctioned same-sex partnerships since the 1990s, reporting “that the rate of dissolution within five years of entering a legal union is higher among same-sex partnerships than among heterosexual marriages, with lesbian couples having the highest rates of dissolution.” Their rendering underplays the magnitude of the actual findings, which was that gay male relationships are 50 percent more likely to break up than heterosexual marriages, while lesbian relationships are 167 percent more likely to break up than heterosexual marriages. Odd that they would not mention these actual numbers.

One common obfuscation of such matters can be illustrated through the sensitive issue of rates of homosexual attraction among children raised in homosexual households. Summarizing this research, Gregory Herek, a psychologist who specializes in the study of homosexuality, wrote that “the vast majority of those children eventually grow up to be heterosexual.” It appears he is right, technically. Terms such as “a vast majority” are often used in this literature to obscure probabilistic trends in the data. The small bit of research that exists suggests increased rates of same-sex orientation among the children of such couples; my informal synthesis would be that gay parenting approximately triples or quadruples the rate of same-sex attraction. It may be technically true that “the vast majority of these children eventually grow up to be heterosexual,” but only because if being raised by same-sex parents increases the occurrence of same-sex attraction from 2 percent to 8 percent, 92 percent are still heterosexual. But a fourfold increase is still a sizable effect statistically.

Has empirical science established homosexual identity as positive and legitimate? Some would claim so. University of California psychologists Phillip Hammack and Eric Windell argue that a dramatic shift has “repositioned the scientific narrative of homosexuality from sickness to species” and homosexuality is to be affirmed as “a legitimate minority identity akin to race and ethnicity.” The APA task force on SOCE declared in 2009 that “Same-sex sexual attractions, behavior, and orientations per se are normal and positive variants of human sexuality.”

Declarations that homosexuality is “normal,” “positive,” and “legitimate” would seem be the product of value judgments rather than objective science. The APA’s Proposition 8 brief argues that sexual orientation “encompasses an individual’s sense of personal and social identity based on those attractions, behaviors expressing them, and membership in a community of others who share them.” There indeed are persons who organize their lives around their sexual orientation. But to claim for all human persons that “sexual orientation encompasses an individual’s sense of personal and social identity” is remarkable both conceptually and scientifically. I cannot conceive of data comprehensive enough to support this claim. And how does science establish that such a grounding of human identity is “positive”?

Science may be able to contribute valuable evidence about the association of such identities with certain measurable functional realities of life, such as whether such individuals experience heightened levels of emotional distress, report levels of self-esteem comparable to those of others, and so forth. But how did science become the arbiter of what is positive? Such a thing can happen, precisely as Hammack and Windell suggest, through a paradigm shift within the discipline, a decision of practicing psychologists to embrace the “minority narrative of homosexuality.” But can empirical science establish homosexual orientation as “a legitimate minority identity” or sexual orientation as a fundamental for constituting the self? I hardly see how.

The APA SOCE task force, and the gay-affirming psychological mainstream it represents, describes gay-affirming therapy as pursuing “congruence” between identity and sexual orientation. It seems to take this as a self-evident good. But the task force also seems to recognize that an affirmation of same-sex attraction goes beyond the traditional competence of science. Reflecting on the clash of scientific and religious perspectives on this point, they note that “some religions give priority to telic congruence” while, in contrast, “affirmative and multicultural models of LGB psychology give priority to organismic congruence.” In a moment of exceptional clarity, the task force put its finger on a core issue: Gay-affirming psychologies necessarily embody extrascientific moral and ethical deliberations that raise the potential of conflict with religious beliefs, precisely because the very act of giving priority to organismic congruence is a religious and ethical choice.

As the late theologian Don Browning noted, psychology “cannot avoid a metaphysical and ethical horizon.” Meaningful consideration of the nature of personhood always involves moving beyond the analysis of human life to the broader valuation of this or that characteristic, this or that phenomenon, this or that outcome. The social sciences do not contain within themselves adequate resources to adjudicate among conflicting ways of understanding the good. Individual scientists, stepping beyond their professional bounds, may declare homosexual orientation positive, normal, and legitimate, but such science cannot make this judgment. Such judgments are the domain of religion, theology, and philosophy. The twin claims that science conclusively establishes that sexual orientation grounds human identity and that psychology as a science establishes the legitimacy of such a claim are too far a reach.

So where does this leave us? We know much more now than we did ten and thirty years ago about the emotional well-being of homosexual persons, the complicated interaction of nature and nurture in the causation of sexual orientation, of the complicated and difficult possibilities of sexual-orientation malleability, of the functional and descriptive characteristics manifest in same-sex partnerships, and of the contours of the psychological identities of homosexual persons. The contributions of science to this area, however, remain sketchy, limited, and puzzling. It is remarkable how little scientific humility is in evidence given the primitive nature of our knowledge.

Nevertheless, our culture is polarized between those relentlessly advancing the full acceptance and normalization of homosexuality, indeed of all sexual variations, and those resisting those moves. As religious believers, we must confess our own culpability in creating the mess we are in.

We were complicit, even if ignorantly and passively so, in the cultural embrace of the disease conceptualization of homosexuality. We off-loaded responsibility for the articulation of a thoughtful, caring, theologically rich, and pastorally sensitive understanding of sexual brokenness grounded in our various religious traditions by conceptualizing homosexuality as a disease, and so we were unprepared for the vacuum created by that explanation’s timely demise. The best ecclesiastical, professional, legal, and social policy will be founded not on falsehoods or grotesque and indefensible simplifications but on a clearheaded grasp of reality in all its complexities, as well as on a humble recognition of all that we do not know.

Stanton L. Jones is provost and professor of psychology at Wheaton College. An expanded version of this essay is available at www.christianethics.org, as is a document offering the specific citations for this February, 2012, feature article.

Intervista alla psicologa Valeria Giamundo sulle conseguenze del divozio nell'infanzia

di Britta Dörre

ROMA, martedì, 28febbraio 2012 (ZENIT.org) - Le separazioni e i divorzi sono un fenomeno sempre più in aumento anche in Italia. Sono numerose le cause di questo fenomeno e ancora più numerose le conseguenze che esso porta nell'ambito familiare, particolarmente sui figli.

ZENIT ne ha parlato con la psicologa Valeria Giamundo, psicoterapeuta e docente presso la Scuola di Psicoterapia cognitivo-comportamentale, che svolge attività di ricerca finalizzata allo sviluppo di interventi trattamentali innovativi sull’età evolutiva.

Negli ultimi anni la dottoressa si è interessata di separazioni e divorzi, sviluppando un modello di trattamento sull'elaborazione della separazione genitoriale, rivolto a gruppi di bambini e/o adolescenti.

Dott.ssa Giamundo, quali sono le ragioni di tale incremento?

Dott.ssa Giamundo: Le separazioni e i divorzi sono la conseguenza di profonde trasformazioni sociali e culturali, a partire dalla emancipazione femminile, fino ad arrivare alla mentalità individualista della società odierna, che promuove l'interesse per il benessere dell'individuo e la realizzazione personale, a discapito di quello familiare e della società nel suo insieme.

L'instabilità lavorativa ed economica, e dunque lo stress e il sentimento di precarietà, sembrano rallentare il passaggio alla vita adulta e con esso la decisione di mettere su famiglia, subordinate al raggiungimento della stabilità del reddito, della ricerca di un'abitazione e così via. La conseguenza è una realtà familiare caratterizzata da nuclei sempre più piccoli, con equilibri instabili e conflittualità relazionali.

Le statistiche evidenziano inoltre che, affianco all'incremento delle separazioni e dei divorzi, si registra anche una diminuzione del tasso dei matrimoni, il che potrebbe confermare una effettiva propensione alla rottura dei legami.

Sono molte le persone che, vivendo una separazione o un divorzio, ricercano l’aiuto di uno psicologo?

Dott.ssa Giamundo: Con l'aumento del fenomeno è senz'altro cresciuto il bisogno di far riferimento a figure professionali come noi poiché, in realtà, non si è mai preparati veramente a fronteggiare un evento così stressante. La diffusione del fenomeno, infatti, ha comportato una tendenza alla normalizzazione talvolta eccessiva dell'evento, col rischio di sottovalutare gli esiti del processo separativo.

E quali sono le conseguenze?

Dott.ssa Giamundo: Gli studi dimostrano che la separazione coniugale è al secondo posto tra gli eventi stressanti nella vita di un individuo, subito dopo la morte di un parente stretto. In ambito clinico, infatti, la separazione viene paragonata proprio al lutto per le sue caratteristiche psicologiche ed emotive.

La divisione familiare genera ricadute inevitabili sul benessere psicofisico di tutti i membri della famiglia, e incide significativamente sulla qualità dei rapporti tra genitori e figli, generando la necessità, per tutti i membri, di ricorrere ad un supporto psicoterapico.

In un bambino quali sono i segni più frequenti?

Dott. Giamundo: Possono essere di varia natura ed entità: rabbia, frustrazione, ansia, depressione, regressioni, problemi comportamentali, disturbi del sonno e così via.

E' importante osservare le reazioni del bambino anche in contesti extra-familiari; gli insegnanti, ad esempio, sono una fonte importante di informazione circa il benessere del minore. Spesso sono proprio loro a segnalare un disagio, evidenziando ad esempio un calo dell'attenzione e dell'apprendimento.

Nel bambino tuttavia i segni della sofferenza non emergono sempre in maniera così evidente; i genitori infatti descrivono bambini che protestano apertamente, bambini che si chiudono in se stessi, ma anche bambini che reagiscono positivamente e che sembrano adattarsi facilmente all'evento.

In questi casi non va trascurato che potrebbe piuttosto trattarsi di forme di pseudo-adattamento, come accade nei bambini che negano la separazione dei genitori o inibiscono l'espressione del disagio per non intensificare il conflitto coniugale.

Quali sono gli effetti delle separazioni a lungo termine? Nel senso che i figli, nel corso della crescita, possono risentire molto degli errori dei genitori?

Dott. Giamundo: La separazione, se non è bene elaborata, può avere degli effetti a lungo tempo nella capacità di costruire e mantenere legami affettivi ma, attenzione, non è vero che i figli di genitori separati rischiano più esiti negativi dei figli di genitori uniti.

Il clima familiare e la qualità dei rapporti è un elemento essenziale. I danni maggiori sono dovuti infatti al perpetrarsi di condizioni in cui il minore si sente oggetto di contesa; in questi casi il bambino reagirà accentuando l’alleanza con uno dei genitori, generalmente quello affidatario o collocatario.

Lo schieramento con uno solo dei genitori è quasi necessario per il bambino che teme ulteriori abbandoni, ma esso genera dei vissuti carichi di sensi di colpa, conflitti interiori (oltre che relazionali) che avranno inevitabilmente delle conseguenze sul suo futuro equilibrio psico-affettivo.

Perché i genitori non riescono ad aiutare i figli in questo momento della storia familiare?

Dott.ssa Giamundo: I genitori vivono anch'essi la separazione come un evento traumatico, spesso inoltre la scelta di separarsi non è condivisa. In questi casi la rabbia, il timore, il senso di fallimento impediscono un confronto sereno e volto ad individuare le migliori soluzioni per l'equilibrio familiare.

La conflittualità è senz'altro il sintomo più frequente e si riflette in comportamenti distruttivi rivolti non unicamente verso il partner, ma anche verso i figli e se stessi. Si avviano delle vere e proprie guerre nelle aule dei tribunali, dove il diritto dei figli di vivere serenamente una relazione equilibrata con le due figure di riferimento viene affidato alla competenza di un giudice o di un perito.

Queste guerre possono causare l'intensificarsi del disagio del minore, con conseguenze acute e croniche che impediscono lo sviluppo di una personalità sana e armonica. Gli adulti di riferimento per i minori, divengono improvvisamente fragili e bisognosi d'aiuto; in alcuni casi saranno così i figli ad assumere il compito di "protettori", rimanendo invischiati in relazioni disfunzionali dove finiscono solitamente per proteggere il genitore ritenuto più debole.

Come dovrebbero comportarsi quindi i genitori per limitare la sofferenza dei figli?

Dott.ssa Giamundo: In questi casi i genitori vanno aiutati o supportati, attraverso la mediazione familiare, nell'attuazione di questo complesso processo di cambiamento, che implica una notevole riorganizzazione del funzionamento familiare. Il compito di un genitore è mantenere integra la funzione genitoriale, limitare il conflitto e rinnovare la rete di relazioni significative, affinché anche con esse possano meglio supportare la crescita del minore.

Ci sono regole comportamentali che possono guidare i genitori nella gestione dei figli durante una separazione?

Dott.ssa Giamundo: Secondo gli esperti, per tutelare il bambino, i genitori dovrebbero osservare tre principi fondamentali:

1) garantire la continuità delle condizioni più pragmatiche, come i ritmi dei pasti e dell’addormentamento, gli impegni extrascolastici, ecc..;

2) garantire la prevedibilità, ovvero dare al bambino la possibilità di prevedere alcuni eventi, di sapere anticipare cosa faranno;

3) garantire l’affidabilità, rimanendo dei punti di riferimento affettivi importanti per i figli, affinché si sentano realmente amati e supportati nei bisogni di crescita personali.

La famiglia allargata è un argomento molto dibattuto negli ultimi anni. Molti film la trattano e spesso si mostra che in questi casi, superati i problemi, c'è sempre un happy-end. Nella realtà come percepiscono i figli questo cambiamento?

Dott.ssa Giamundo: La transizione dalla famiglia unita alla famiglia separata spesso si accompagna alla formazione di nuovi nuclei familiari, e ciò richiede un ulteriore sforzo di adattamento da parte del minore.

La capacità di accettare e integrarsi nel nuovo contesto familiare dipende dalla sensibilità e gradualità dei genitori di favorire l’integrazione nel nuovo nucleo: essi non dovrebbero imporre tempi e modalità che non tengano conto delle caratteristiche individuali dei figli.

Se il bambino non ha accettato la separazione dei genitori, può percepire il nuovo partner come un intruso e il suo vissuto di abbandono può accompagnarsi a sentimenti di tradimento o esclusione.

La conoscenza e presenza del nuovo partner dovrebbe essere, quindi, graduale discreta, con particolare cautela a sfuggire alla "trappola" della competizione e della provocazione. Se poi è il genitore che ha "subito" la separazione a non accettare l'idea del nuovo compagno, il bambino rimane incastrato nel conflitto di lealtà e gli viene impedita la possibilità di costruire una buona relazione.

Un happy-end, dunque, sembra molto difficile….

Dott.ssa Giamundo: Al contrario, gli esiti dipendono dagli atteggiamenti dei genitori e dei loro rispettivi partner. L’happy-end è possibile, ma ci si deve lavorare. Non parlo solo dell'intervento professionale, ma mi riferisco alla volontà del genitore di mettersi in discussione, di partecipare attivamente e con maggiore consapevolezza al complesso processo della separazione.

Qual'è la funzione dello psicologo in questi casi?

Dott.ssa Giamundo: Il professionista dovrebbe innanzitutto esplorare la possibilità di una riconciliazione, ma se non ci sono le condizioni per favorire un ricongiungimento, la sua funzione consisterà nel facilitare l'elaborazione dell'evento, stimolare nell'adulto la consapevolezza delle numerose implicazioni che tale evento può avere sulla famiglia, sia sul piano emotivo - psichico che su quello concreto - organizzativo.

Per quanto riguarda il trattamento del bambino invece?

Dott.ssa Giamundo: Nel caso del bambino, l'intervento dovrà essere centrato sulla comprensione, accettazione, elaborazione della separazione genitoriale. E' importante aiutarlo a riconoscere le emozioni che ha generato, inclusi sentimenti di rabbia e frustrazione, ambivalenza affettiva o il senso di colpa, poiché spesso i figli si sentono responsabili dell'evento. In questa direzione, negli ultimi anni ho applicato la terapia di gruppo che si è rivelata particolarmente efficace per i bambini.

Come funziona questa terapia?

Dott.ssa Giamundo: I bambini affrontano i problemi legati alla separazione in gruppi omogenei per età, di 4 o 5 partecipanti. Condividono la sofferenza, si confrontano tra loro e si sostengono reciprocamente. Il bambino affronta il suo problema con più coraggio traendo vantaggio dalle esperienze altrui. Il ruolo del terapeuta è stimolare il confronto reciproco, aiutandoli ad esprimere i propri stati d'animo e trovare nuove soluzioni per facilitare l'adattamento. Per avere successo, ad ogni modo, la terapia del minore dovrà essere affiancata ad interventi di sostegno rivolti alle figure genitoriali.

Chi si rivolge a lei: i genitori spontaneamente o i genitori su richiesta dei loro figli?

Dott.ssa Giamundo: Solitamente sono i genitori a richiedere la consulenza per se stessi o per i figli. Nel migliore dei casi - mi riferisco a quei genitori particolarmente sensibili e attenti - la consultazione è richiesta in una fase precedente alla separazione, per essere orientati e guidati nel processo: capire, ad esempio, come comunicarlo ai figli, come proporre il cambiamento, riorganizzare i loro ritmi di vita e così via.

Quando invece la consulenza professionale è richiesta in una fase successiva, le motivazioni che la sottendono sono legate alle difficoltà a gestire il disagio del minore: i genitori cioè hanno preso atto che non sono in grado, da soli, di alleviare la sofferenza del proprio figlio.

Quali sono i casi più frequenti?

Dott.ssa Giamundo: Un caso che ricorre spesso è quello dei figli che, a partire dai 10 anni, chiedono ai genitori di fornire loro un aiuto professionale esterno.

Sono i casi in cui si regista un maggiore sofferenza, poiché i ragazzi hanno preso atto che il proprio disagio non è più risolvibile con l'aiuto genitoriale; ma sono anche i casi che hanno una prognosi più positiva, poiché la consapevolezza del disagio è unita al desiderio di superarlo, e proprio la motivazione al cambiamento faciliterà il recupero di una condizione di serenità ed equilibrio.