guy's mind

This is really something. Richard Cohen has been on many TV shows with his unconventional views of how things work.



Transcript:

Jim McGreevy is back in the headlines this week. You will remember him; he’s the New Jersey governor who resigned when he revealed that he’s gay. He was also married to a woman at the time of that revelation. He has released excerpts of his memoir which will be published in September, and he described his life as a closeted gay man in politics as a slow march into hell. Now, to come out or not is a struggle for any gay person, but a few choose a third and very controversial option: therapy to make them straight. Deborah Feyerick has tonight’s eye opener.

If you’ve been watching the Sopranos on HBO, then you know the secret. Vito, a mob guy, married with kids, on the run, knowing he’ll be killed because he’s gay. It may sound like a plot line the reaction from Vito’s TV wife that there’s a cure is very real, and it’s a reaction many gay people and their families wonder about in the beginning. Is it possible to change, to not be gay?

There are groups who believe that it is possible. Some use religion, others more unusual techniques; more on that in a moment. But, whether it’s faith-based or secular, Dr. Jack Dresher of the American Psychiatric Association says that the practice of so-called conversion therapy is dangerous:

People who have done anything approximating a scientific report admit that the majority of people who tried to change their sexual orientation do not change.

And yet this man who tells us he was once gay claims to have helped hundreds of men like him. Richard Cohen, now married with three kids, is a leader in the so-called reparative therapy moment. With just more than a thousand members it’s not a particularly big movement, but because it’s so controversial and despised within the gay community it tends to get a lot of attention.

What you’re suggesting is, being gay is a switch, you can turn on or off.

People have a right to determine how they wish to live their life. If they choose to live a gay life – great; o.k. But, to say that I have to live as a gay man because I had those desires, that’s discrimination.

Cohen who had several boy-friends spent years in various kinds of therapy searching for answers. It wasn’t until he remembered being sexually abused by a man when he was a child that, what he calls, his conversion process began.

I knew it wasn’t for me, and I knew it in my gut I wasn’t born this way.

Cohen is an unlicensed therapist. He offers the theory that some sort of childhood trauma triggers homosexuality, that all it takes is figuring out what it is, healing from it, and moving on.

One of his clients is a 42 year old program analyst who we’ll call Rob. Because it’s such a sensitive subject he asked us to shield his identity. He began seeing Cohen three years ago after years of struggling with unwanted homosexual feelings.

I had a mother that basically committed emotional incest with me because they had a very bad marriage. She used me as her husband, a stand-in.

Cohen explains Rob’s same-sex attraction is typical of the men he treats: Cold, distant dad, overbearing mom, and overly sensitive kid. He showed us some of his unconventional techniques like touch therapy, in which he encourages Rob to seek out same-sex mentors to basically recreate a healthy father-son bond.

It’s nonsexual, it established like parent-child relationship. So he didn’t experience this growing up with his dad.

Rob, do you feel a sexual connection right now?

No, I don’t. I feel very save, and very competed, and it just feels wonderful.

Another technique: bioenergetics, designed to help clients release memories stored in the muscles, in this case, by hitting a pillow with a tennis racket.

I was angry at my mother, so I started to say, mom, mom, mom, mom, why did you do that to me?

So, is being gay a matter of nature or nurture? Doctors say they don’t know for sure. There is no gay gene, and no definitive scientific proof that one’s family or environment triggers same-sex attraction. That’s why mainstream mental health experts have had such a huge problem with Cohen and those like him who promote reparative therapy as legitimate.

It’s like this person has landed on earth from Mars and is doing things that the rest of us don’t believe in and that we don’t do. And it’s just unfortunate that there are people who are willing to except, because of the desperate homosexual feelings, to except these kinds of treatment.

48 year old Xavier Yager spent five years in reparative therapy.

It drove me to the edge of suicide several times.

He says it was so damaging it took years to recover.

From my farthest back recollection, I was always gay. I just, you know they always say it’s a choice to be gay, I chose to try to be straight, and I found that it was unattainable.

Yager is now happily gay. Rob is also happy, but for the opposite reason.

I know what I’m experiencing; I know the freedom that I feel now. And, as a result of the work, I don’t have same-sex attractions anymore.

He’s even been chatting with women on the Internet, hoping to line up dates.

Do you see yourself now as an ex-gay?

I see myself now as a much happier person.

A person who seems to have found his own inner peace.

Deborah Feyerick, CNN, Bowe, Maryland.