(Click to download packet in Acrobat)
I was sorting through my old NARTH files at my parents’ place over Christmas and found some old handouts Nicolosi gave me on one of the two occasions I saw him in person for therapy. My first session was held at his home office (where I was probably given the handouts) and the second occasion was a father-son session held in his Encino clinic. Most of my sessions were via telephone since I was in San Luis Obispo for school. I know they came from Nicolosi since he’s the only ex-gay therapist I ever saw or collected literature from. Click on the image to download the packet in Adobe Acrobat format. Yes, the original graphic quality is that bad.
Update 8/12/06: I believe Niolosi wrote about these handouts on the NARTH website here.
Wow, I can’t follow much of that at all. It certainly doesn’t reflect much of my life experience, although some of it is a bit like a horoscope – one can read just about anything into it. I’m curious Daniel, did you feel that you were being helped by this “therapy” at the time? Did it ever seem to make any sense to you?
David
It appears to be saying that the sun of a “Homosexual Moment” can block the radiation generated by a “Black Hole” from creating a “Sexually Addictive Cycle” on your planet. I guess that makes sense. A gay person with some sort of black hole in their lives can keep from becoming a sex addict by affirming their sexual orientation instead of denying it. Prolly a lil more truth than Nicolosi intended to convey tho…
I’m sorry but I’ve never read a bigger load of junk in my life.
Nicolosi is a complete fraud.
This reminds me strongly of things I’ve read in the new-age/esoteric/pseudoscience field – ambiguous diagrams, neologistic labels, and obscure thought processes all coming together in a weird amalgam. Although the cranks I’m familiar with usually have better graphic design and more interesting nomenclature.
Sudden memory – one of the first parades I marched in, back in the very early ’80s, we saw an earlier generation of fundies in their _cordon sanitaire_, holding their garish banners with thoughtful, caring slogans like TURN OR BURN.
We began chanting, “Our graphic design is better than your graphic design!” They were gobsmacked.
“gobsmacked”
That is such a wonderfully descriptive word. I think I first heard it on the British version of Queer Eye.
Sorry for the OT, carry on 🙂
David
I’m confused. If I fit most of the descriptions in the left hand column, which I do, I’m supposed to be in line with my true self. Kudos to me! But at the bottom it says there should be “no homosexuality.” Rats. And on the chart leading to the black hole, since my attitudes towards life and personal male relationships never put me on the arrows towards the black hole, where am I? Sounds like, not surprisingly, just a bunch of psychobabble to me. Do most of the people in the program thing this is accurate and try to bend their lives around it. I do agree that the people there are probably living not as their true self, because they are trying desparately to be straight.
This handout would be funny if I didn’t know that its psuedo-psychology was used to “explain” to unknowledgeable students why they shouldn’t be gay.