In Monday’s (05/08/06) Focus On The Family broadcast Dobson throws out a new term not even Google has a clinical definition for called “detachment and differentiation.” This supposedly describes the process by which a young boy separates from the mother and bonds with the father around ages 2-3. Dobson says homosexuality is “very typically rooted in the failure to accomplish that differentiation.” Dobson proceeds to tell listeners and a studio gallery full of Focus Institute students he remembers that pivotal moment at age 2-3 which led to formation of his heterosexuality.
Of course I have a full transcript and audio:
This is fairly new information that’s being discussed in the child development clinics and in the universities throughout the country and around the world, and it is called “detachment and differentiation.” In other words, a boy detaches from his mother and then begins to accept the role model that he sees in the father. The father really needs to entice the boy away from the feminine characteristics in the mother and begin to teach him to identify with the masculine model.
Now folks, listen to me, it is now believed that homosexuality is very typically rooted in the failure to accomplish that differentiation and when you see individuals who are very very feminine and you go back and you look at the early childhood development characteristics you will see a failure to make that change.
I’ve been very blessed from the early days with a memory of my childhood. I don’t know how to explain that except that I have many memories from the second year and hundreds of memories from the third year and fourth year and so on and I can tell you all kinds of stories of things that took place at two and three and four. Our daughter is the same way, she has that same kind of memory. Would you believe that I recall that change taking place? Now I couldn’t have used these words and I didn’t understand, but I knew that I was pulling back from my mother and toward my father between two and three years of age.
I was curious about this “detachment and differentiation” Dobson claims is all the rage in child development clinics and “universities throughout the country and around the world.” The only clinical articles found by Google on “detachment and differentiation” are about the detachment and differentiation of urinary bladder cells. Even a search of Focus On The Family’s website turns up absolutly nothing.
Hmmm… I remember detachment and differentiation from Psych 101 back in college. Or maybe it was human ecology (home economics) in high school… I took a lot of psych electives to avoid math and science.
See Google
First of all, there is somewhat of a so what quality to this idea. Does it indicate something is wrong or abnormal if a child does not detach from the mother? Second, how do we know if this is socialized or inborn? Maybe some children are hardwired to not detach? I love the very, very feminine part because once again many gays are not feminine. I am not personally (not that there is anything wrong with that).
Why does Dobson surround himself with unusually feminine men and unusually masculine women?
Why does he populate his supposedly pro-family organization with persons who apparently have little experience of stable childhoods and who obviously bear decades-long grudges against parents?
Why do Dobson and his staffers project and inflict their own family resentments upon the general public?
I find Dobson’s recruitment practices quite odd.
He remembers that moment from when he was 2-3 years old? Wow, he should be in the book of records for the best memory ever. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast let alone what I was thinking at 2-3 years old.
Doesn’t anyone else think there is something a little goofy about someone claiming they remember a moment in time from when they were 3?
Joe- not only does he remember what happened when he was 2 and 3 years old, but he remembers more than just events, but his state of mind from a specific period during that age.
It’s so sad that he feels the need to relate this absurdity to others and that people out there really buy into this stuff.
So… Dobson was gay until he was 2?
Quote: Doesn’t anyone else think there is something a little goofy about someone claiming they remember a moment in time from when they were 3?
No, not at all. I remember *at least* a dozen things from that age, although they’re mostly flashes. There are, however, several distinct memories from that age that my parents wouldn’t know about, so there’s no possibility that they’ve told me and I just remember hearing about it from them.
My mom clearly remembers she was sitting in the grass in a yellow sun dress, playing, when they brought her newborn sister home from the hospital (she was about 3 1/2).
I’m not sure what my dad can recall, but it’s not uncommon to have memories from that age.
Of course I can’t possibly describe to you my state of mind like Dobson can 🙂
I tried downloading the audio and got a message that I don’t have permission to do so.
Doesn’t anyone else think there is something a little goofy about someone claiming they remember a moment in time from when they were 3?
I can remember moments from when I was 1-1, possibly earlier.
We lived in an apartment until the time I turned 2. I told my mother about remembering events in that apartment and she didn’t believe me. I got a piece of paper out and started drawing out a floorplan of the apartment. I even remembered the arrangememt of the bathroom, which is important because we don’t have any pictures taken of the bathroom. In other words, I wasn’t relying on photo albums to reconstruct my memory. There was just one corner of the living room I couldn’t remember. Mom looked at me and said that was where she kept a space heater and had that area blocked off.
I also remember the thrill of learning to walk, and then sometime later thinking that it wasn’t as thrilling as I once thought it was. Who knows why I remember these things.
But such concepts as detachment and differentiation? A before-and-after of gender identity or sexual orientation? I think that’s a bit of a stretch. Throwing mom’s watch into the toilet to see it make a splash was much more interesting.
When I said “I can remember moments from when I was 1-1,” that should be “1-2”.
This is classic Dobson. Not unlike the current administration, he comes to a decision and then looks for evidence to support it. In this case, he is recycling some old Freudian theories (which lack empirical support) and conflating them with attachment theory (that is currently an active area of research and has little to do with orientation).
Re: his early childhood memories. He also reports remembering that he tearfully walked down the aisle to the altar to be “saved” when he was three years old. (His father was an itinerant fundamentalist Nazarene minister.) Aside from the specificity of his early memories and state of mind, which are highly suspect, what 3 year old has the cognitive capacity and theological sophistication to understand and make an informed decision about such a matter?
I’m never sure whether he is outright lying or really believes this stuff – in which case he’s delusional.
The problem isn’t really if he actually remembers things from when he was two–or if anyone does. The problem is that what he remembers is not pure memory. When we remember things, those memories are filtered through all the experience we’ve had since. So what he remembers as an event becomes something more than what it actually was—it has been weighed down with all of the interpretation Dobson has applied to it.
So can I beleive that Dobson remembers SOMETHING from when he was two? Certainly. But is it reasonable to think, considering what he’s using that memory for, that it has to meaning he has applied to it? Most assuredly not.
I will try to find some sources, but one of the things they covered in my psychology courses was memory. One of the things that was discussed is that most memories under 4 are reconstructed. People hear stories, see pictures, and construct the memories. From the information in the class, the development of the brain would forbid true knowledge of earlier memories. Yet many people insist they know what happened in those years. Typically they are false memories. In fact, when dealing with writing, I focus in class on the idea that memories are reconstructed in order to facilitate nonfiction. There are even people who believe they remember the womb.
I have memories from a very early age – but they are not how my older memories are. They are snatches of things. Almost like snapshots (although they don’t match any pictures in any of our family photo albums) or more feelings with a brief sounds or smells or something like that. I think if someone says “When I was two I remember my mom coming up to me and saying such-and-such and then this happened and then I went over there to play” it’s probably a recreation of sorts. I could be wrong, though, but from everything I’ve read, seems like that would be the case.
Regardless, I agree that he’s applied a lot of adult meaning to these memories.
Some interesting sites about how we create early memories:
https://library.thinkquest.org/C0110291/science/forget/altered.php
https://www.msu.edu/~henrikse/cep909/warofghosts.htm
“the development of the brain would forbid true knowledge of earlier memories.”
I’m very skeptical of absolute statements like these.
I understand the idea of reconstruction of memory. I have several “memories” that I can discount because they match stories or photos that I know I have been exposed to since then.
But none of the photos or stories told me about the arrangement of the bathroom in that apartment that we moved out of before my brother was born shortly after my second birthday. I know exactly where the toilet, bathtub and sink were, and I knew about the fluorescent light tubes on either side of the mirror above the sink. There are no photos of that bathroom, and who talks about such things? There is no other explanation of where that memory comes from.
Like Christine, my memories are brief snatches, representing events of no more than a few seconds in length perhaps. Some are significant however in terms of meaning, but the meaning was obviously assigned long after. Two-year-olds aren’t capable of that level of self-awareness, IMO.
I have another memory that is probably more appropriate to this discussion. My memory is of “the day I learned to talk”, taking place in the bedroom of that same apartment as my mother was dressing me. Obviously I didn’t learn to talk in a day, nor is it likely that I even believed I learned to talk on that day. But the event of that memory carried a significance that I later ascribed a meaning to — a meaning which obviously cannot be the least bit accurate.
Because of that, I agree that trying to ascribe such existential meaning to early memories like these is utterly foolish at a minimum.
Heterosexuals can pretty much recall when they hated the opposite sex, if they did…or when they realized who they were attracted to.
Gay people can recall when they realized they were gay-usually from the same age as a hetero kid does.
The difference in these recollections is that heteros like Dobson have no respect for or belief of gay folk’s recollections.
He’s dictating when gay people become gay, rather then accepting the reality of it.
A person’s realization of their orientation looks pretty much to be the same.
Mitigating factors can be experienced by either gender without necessarily the same or common results.
How OTHER people deal with the disclosure of orientation is what’s especially different and sometimes extremely negative for the gay child.
Sexual abuse is most often against females, who also most often suffer from low self esteem, not alteration of orientation.
Nor do females become abusers as often as males.
Same goes for physical violence against children, if not sexual abuse.
Detachment…if it’s in the category of pathological detachment, is a response to abuse of all kinds, and still isn’t a process of orientation.
A person is going to be gay, no matter what happens to them as a child. As the same goes for a person is going to be hetero, no matter what happens to them at a young age as well.
It’s really not that complicated, nor a matter of extreme difference between gay people and non gay people.
The difference, in fact, is of not enough substance to substantiate or validate whatever those like Dobson usually say.
What Dobson mostly tends to reveal to us critically thinking straight people, and gay people, is that he’s full of shit.
I don’t know if Dobson has true memories from age two. But I do find it very suspect that he has “hundreds” of memories from age three. A child’s life just doesn’t have that many distinct and unique experiences.
I have a few memories from 3 – 5, but they are snatches and by this time I’m not sure if they are truly a memory or are a memory of a memory.
Perhaps Dobson is able to remember earlier than most of us. And perhaps when he says “hundreds” he’s simply exagerating. And maybe he thinks he remembers detaching from his mother and differentiating between the genders of his parents and attaching to his father, but that’s pretty much a stretch.
When Dobson makes these bizarre claims, it takes away from his overall credibility.
It sets up the idea that he accepts his own “memories of events” even if those memories are far too advanced for that age. It seems that he puts his own opinions and beliefs at a greater level than the measured observations of science.
It’s similar to when Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet. Yes, he had some basis for taking some credit for facilitating a program that was useful in the early development of the internet. But that’s not the same thing. And it made Gore seem out of touch and arrogant and hurt his political campaign.
Similarly, Dobson may have some early memory of Daddy coming home and running from Mommy to Daddy. But to claim that you recall the detachment and differentiation process occuring at age two opens you up to ridicule.
Jim, I remember the first house that my parents had and I remember the set-up and where everything was, but I also have to realize that there were pictures of the house, films, and my parent’s stories. I don’t think I really remember the house itself, but what I was told, etc. My memories are in third person, not first, so I have to assume that these are reconstructed. I remember being on the grass as a pre-walking baby drinking from the hose, but I also know that there was a picture of it–so I suspect the memory is made up, but I remember it quite clearly.
Don’t get me wrong–I am not an expert in psychology and memories, so I am sure there are lots of theories about memory. And I could be completely wrong (and psychology for that matter)–can we ever truly know? I also come from a religious background that believed that your memories as a child disappear as time goes on because we aren’t supposed to remember that period of time.
However, my mom in the 80s had a nervous breakdown and went to a psychologist. She came back with all kinds of bizarre memories that by all accounts are not true (nobody remembers them in the family–such as her father supposedly throwing dynamite in her room). She swears up and down they happened, but there is no proof. Memories are strange things. As stated before, it is actually really useful in my classes to teach about the problems with memory and honesty–it helps in creative writing. Again, in the end, I will never know, but in my own experience, I suspect my early memories are created, and I am happy about that.
I suspect Dobson “hundreds” of memories are measured on the same scale as Exodus’ “tens of thousands” (or however many there are these days) of exgays.
So… what about about the nearly 17 million children who live with their unmarried single moms? If its so “typical” for gay people to not differentiate from their moms, why don’t we see scads and scads of gay kids emerging from these families? Statistically, wouldn’t this be so?
Robis said:
So can I beleive that Dobson remembers SOMETHING from when he was two? Certainly. But is it reasonable to think, considering what he’s using that memory for, that it has to meaning he has applied to it? Most assuredly not.
Along with what Timothy said about “hundreds of memories”, good points. I have maybe a couple of memories that I can verify were from age 2, but they are very short snippets. I’ve never heard of anyone maintaining hundreds of memories from that age period with intact context.
David Roberts
If anyone is having difficulty accessing the MP3 recording of Dobson that is linked in Daniel’s post, then please e-mail me and let me know which browser you’re using, and whether you are clicking on the link above or accessing the file by some other means.
Thanks.
JFK Jr. said that he didn’t know if he had any true memories of his father. His memories had probably been created by the many pictures of the President. That is sad. I treasure the few scraps of memory I have of my first 4 years.
BTW – Does the SpongeDob have a theory about those gay men who are not “effeminate?” He’s trying to put a clinical facade on pure blind hate.
ARG! Al Gore did NOT claim to have invented the internet. The Bush campaign ran ads claiming that Al Gore said he invented the internet, but if campaign ads are to be taken on face value then we end up with one heck of a wacky world view.
Please do a simple Google search on “internet” and “Al Gore”.
Hmmm, Aaron and Jim, just been having thoughts about “reconstructed” exgay histories and you two have hit on a point.Actually Jim, if it was to be verified — you would make medical history. (That’s no comment either way, just that you’d be the first. No shame in that!)And memories are obviously laid down earlier that, urgh 4?, you said Aaron. Babies recognise, therefore remember, much earlier. Whether it is retained, and why it is not, is the question. I can think of any number reasons why infancy would be covered over by the later child. I always think it’s kind of fantastic that nobody remembers the process of being born… now THAT would be just too freaky.Personally, (from both of us) there are only snippets from, say, 3. eg one remembers seeing his grandfather off on a round-the-world voyage when 2 and a bit — clutching fav. staffed toy Panda tightly as he looked down into the water while walking up the gangplank, and a young man in a blue uniform talking to Dad (clues abound at that junction of the memory!). The odd thing was, seeing granddad off had been well and truly forgotten by Mum. She swore we had not. Dad took a moment, but then did remember. Later, Mum did find a crinkled old B&W photo; she went hunting through shoe boxes.Neither, unfortunately, could recall the nice young man in the navy blue uniform (who would now be 60+ years old). Happy days.
Dan at May 12, 2006 10:47 AM
Whooops. Sorry. My bad.
Gore’s actual words were “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”
As snopes tells us that “he sponsored the 1988 National High-Performance Computer Act (which established a national computing plan and helped link universities and libraries via a shared network) and cosponsored the Information Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992” but that “many of the components of today’s Internet came into being well before Gore’s first term in Congress began in 1977.”
https://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp
That was sloppiness on my part. My paragraph should have read:
“It’s similar to when Al Gore claimed to have taken the initiative to create the internet. Yes, he had some basis for taking some credit for passing legislation that was useful in the early development of the internet. But that’s not the same thing. And it made Gore seem out of touch and arrogant and hurt his political campaign.”
Thanks for the correction
“Happy days” at the conclusion of reminiscing???Well, dead give away. It’s not too difficult to tell who came from a long line of Scousers is it?…