From the International Healing Foundation (Richard Cohen) website, we learn that a Liberty University student will soon begin an internship “under the direct supervision of Richard Cohen.” He is to start on-site and telephone counseling on January 12, 2010. The site encourages readers to make an appointment now to start their nine weeks of “expert coaching [which] leads you to your personal healing plan.”
Christopher [Doyle] came out of homosexuality, married his beautiful wife in 2006, and together they have a one-year old son. He knows firsthand what it’s like to experience conflicts over one’s SSA and the journey to wholeness and healing. Presently, he is completing his master’s degree in counseling from Liberty University.
There are no details on whether Doyle’s “journey to wholeness” was associated with Cohen or IHF. Doyle’s story stands out in that he claims the catalyst for his homosexual attractions was a period of early sexual experience with a girl four years his senior.
When he was 9, his 13 year-old female cousin came to live with the family and introduced this young, impressionable boy to sexual relations. This sexual abuse went on for the greater part of one year, until she moved away. Starving for affection during this time, Christopher began to act out sexually.
But what really stirred our interest was that Doyle is earning his master’s degree at Liberty University and performing his official internship in that program with Cohen — under his direct supervision. Cohen is unlicensed and was permanently expelled in 2002 from his professional organization, the American Counseling Association (ACA), after being found in violation of six sections of their ethics code. One need only do a brief web search to find any number of well written articles on the truly bizarre, wholly unprofessional practices of the man.
And yet, we have this intern, Doyle, apparently approved to do this master’s internship with Cohen. To get at the facts, we looked to the faculty list of Liberty University’s Center for Counseling and Family Studies. The Executive Director is listed as Dr. Tim Clinton. We emailed him to ask if Cohen’s IHF was an approved internship site for Liberty students. We have not heard back from him.
A quick search for details on Clinton leads to his own website which in turn shows us that he is also associated with the American Association of Christian Counselors. In fact, he is the president of the AACC. The AACC attempts to be the Christian alternative to the ACA. It is a private, for-profit company and Clinton runs it (and appears to have done so from it’s inception). It seems almost impossible that he would not know of Cohen’s reputation.
Cohen has not been siting idle the past couple of years. He may have been down after what seemed an endless series of very strange public displays of his nonsense, but he is not out. He managed to get Exodus to make nice with him. He got a book published by a respected Christian publisher (to the dismay of many) and he is adding to his flock of “certified as a sexual reorientation coaches” (CSRC) — a term made up to describe those who are “trained” by Cohen.
Now it appears he has managed to get himself approved to train interns from a major university, a move presumably approved by the president of a major Christian counseling group.
Update 10/28/2009: Dr. Clinton responded to our query a couple of days later after conducting an investigation into the matter — details in a separate post.
I was in Liberty’s MA program not too long ago. While they do cover the material needed for licensure, it is presented in a way so as to be “filtered” through a “Biblically Christian” (Code for Fundamentalist Christian) worldview. I got out after three classes so I can’t speak for more than that, but because they have what amounts to almost another curriculum’s worth of material to cover during the classes, the work load is intense and I believe, after experiencing the educational program I’m in now at another school, that the training one will receive through Liberty is compromised to an extent because of this requirement. If they offered the religious reading as suggested or placed it in an annotated bibliography which they provided to the students, then more time could have been spent on examining the psychological issues presented and the research related to them more substantively and in depth – proven research and not just propaganda like in the case of Cohen – thus better equipping one to be an informed and well-trained therapist. Basically, they teach you what the professional organizations require for accredidation, but students are strongly encouraged (though not required to pass) to “Christianize” their theoretical approach – code word for: only actually accept and practice that which supports or is “in line” with fundamentalist theological beliefs. What this ultimately leads to, if carried out, are not therapists who will respect the client’s right to self-determination, no matter how much they try to or believe they are, because at some level the goal is to lead clients toward being the fundamentalists they themselves are! In the end I had to transfer because I realized that other programs offered more in-depth training in proven methods without pumping us up with a particular fundamentalist theology that we were to “integrate” into our practice.
As an example of what I’m talking about (and please note that in this example I’m referring to a hypothetical client who was suffering with mental illness through no fault of their own, so we’re not talking about enabling someone who was engaging in self-destructive behavior like an alcoholic), there was a discussion in one of the classes where students were actually struggling with the notion of when it was appropriate to actively seek to alleviate the suffering of a client since it was always possible that God was using that suffering to “discipline” or “correct” them or that He wanted them to suffer for the sake of Christ, for the purpose of learning how to “rejoice in suffering” as a path to their personal spiritual growth. I’m not making this up, honestly. This gives you an insider’s snapshot as to what really goes on in this subculture and should help you see why it shouldn’t surprise anyone that they are mixed up with the likes of Richard Cohen.
Universities are centers of high knowledge and education. Equating Falwell’s hive of ignorance to a university is insulting enough. As for Cohen, he should be liable for gross ethics violations within his field. A few years in prison is what he deserves.
God is what people frequently use to justify what they could not by any other means.
Do they provide the magical tests to apply to determine whethr it is G testing the patient, or if the patient is truly suffering from mental illness, or at least neurosis?
God is what people frequently use to justify what they could not by any other standard. It is amazing to me that G is often willing to make people suffer as some sort of a test of something or other, the goal of which is ever changing and ever moving. If G had made me a weaker person, does that mean my mother would still be alive? A nun movie with Jane Fonda.
You might think that the God Who Is Love would test people with love and not follow the suggestion of Satan in Job. you’d think…
unless…
mental and emotional problems are just that, and an all knowing, all powerful G would find some other way to test us that doesn’t prey on human weakness and fallibility, a way that isn’t so sadistic and so likely doomed to failure.
Because G is the god of love, not sadism.
Is this the same Christopher Doyle who is identified in the following PFOX press release as being on their board of directors?
Or did they just add-on Doyle so they could have someone lament about wanting a teacher to have helped him out of his mild case of SSA?
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After what the IHF got into in Uganda via Brundidge (sp?) and not mention all of Cohen’s snafus, I find this perfectly lamentable and certainly a black mark against Liberty University’s credibility in anything but it delusional religious world.
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Poor guy… sexually-abused at 9 by a 13 year old female would turn anyone gay…. just where does that fit in with any of the Nicolosian/Exodus/zany ideas of the anti-gay counselling industry? Because his father spurned him at the age of 10? Please… and how does anyone who was “shamed left to fend for himself” at the age of 10 (?) manage to finish high school and go to college if he’s as screwed up as he wants to claim to have been?
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What is it with these ‘dabblers’ who are likely only mildly bisexual or just sexually addicted (from his earlier heterosexual abuse) who make these grand announcements that they’ve left homosexuality.
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It does seem to be the same person, Lynn David. Here is his bio on the PFOX website and it matches the one on IHF. That may explain how he got in touch with Cohen — PFOX pretty much worships Cohen and IHF.
Oh brother…. he says that at 10 years of age after trying to abuse girls in his mother’s health care that he suddenly became gay? If Doyle’s maturation was arrested at age 10 then how could he have functioned enough to have gone to high school and graduate college? These guys always seem to pile on the adversity in their lives, but it doesn’t make sense. No…. Doyle was not homosexual, possibly somewhat bisexual, but for sure was just addicted to sex and went after it the easiest way he could.
I think Liberty also tacitly endorses the biblical counseling model that sees mental illness as at best a personal defect, and at worse a sin. Least ways, I know some Liberty graduates who believe that. By the way, does anyone know why one never finds ex-gay watch’s home address as the first site when one googles it? It’s perplexing me.
I did some digging around the AACC and they look pretty amateur. They accept virtually anyone for membership. I called them and had to inform them that one of their members was retired. They told me many of their members will be dead for years before they find out, leaving them on their membership roles all that time. And of course, any organization that officially promotes reparative therapy as they do can’t be professional.
Liberty University as “a major university”???
I think that is a bit of a stretch.