The most harmful drawback of the proposed NZ legislation is that it will no longer be legitimate to talk to younger people in-depth about homosexuality. No more searching for answers, no more looking under the hood of the car or lifting the car up, only a ready-made identity to slip into, flags to wave, and parades to attend. Each therapist who is sincere, aims to create room for content, not to tackle society, but to help the client ask him/herself: what the hell am I doing?.
At this beginning of the third decade, we know for sure that homosexual behavior is a software issue and not hardware-driven. There was never a better time to open Pandora’s box of the inner mind.
Since 1940, activists have done much to lift the taboo off the subject. Since 2002 radicalized paranoid fringes are putting the lid back on again. They seize state power to achieve what they fail to reach by reason. Their conduct is harsh, brutal, and disproportional. And they are accountable to no one. Nevertheless, thoughtful meaning must win from dogma and misunderstanding. Content must reign supreme over labels. Let’s talk.
1. Homosexuality
What is homosexuality? Is there really a proven genetic reason for homosexuality or proof that bringing up the universal bisexual paradigm is a waste of time? We know for sure that all humans can have same-sex feelings but can also experience opposite-sex feelings; there are no exceptions. The boundaries are fluent and, over time, sexual thoughts are most often fluid in the same person.
No separate monkey races exist. It is a myth to believe such a thing, a crime against humanity to promote such a thing. And yes, gender identity conflict is also as software as they come. We need to talk.
It fills one’s heart with pain to see how professional psychotherapy is thrown before the bus and chucked to the dogs; even illegal migrants canoeing their way to NZ shores across the cold and choppy Tasman Sea receive better treatment than indigenous therapists these days. This is by no means meant to attack famished migrants in their desperate plight at the NZ shores but to attack well-fed politicians in their crusade at NZ Parliament House.
Did you know that in the AU state of Victoria, the Labor Party premier has taken it upon himself to institute a ten-year preventive incarceration scheme, a $250.000 fine to ruin you and your family, and removal from the professional registers for life in case of any demonstrable dissidence? And that Nancy Pelosi in the USA (Democratic Party House Speaker) has the nerve to call talking about sex a barbaric act should the discussion casually linger onto the subject of the opposite sex? There is nothing right about this Bill.
2. Outdated
Homosexuality is an outdated concept. Beatles, anyone? Are you kidding me? You were actually at Woodstock? Is that the era from which you got your ideas?
It is not a swapping of sides that one looks into with youngsters. In this modern-day era, we have finally scientifically proved that same-sex attractions do not exist as a separate sexuality in its own right. There are no sides. Sexuality does not come in isolated and separate categories such as plant, animal, or mineral.
Science demonstrates that human sexuality is fluid and not fixed into separate immutable types. The sexualization of same-sex attractions is a coping mechanism to deal adequately with the elements that constitute the Gay Related Complex.
Let’s talk content. This is not meant to attack the coping mechanism itself or deny its right to exist. People may feel what they like. But they also must be able to look further than the extremely intrusive rainbow-colored conquest of the public space. What more can be said than merely: “glad to be gay”? Is that all?
And if so, is that not a great loss for the true diversity of the public debate? Have the radicalized LGBT activists really grasped the significance of yearning for the opposite sex in the same person when we ponder upon the letter “B”? Where are all these “B” activists in this Bill? Where are their feelings being addressed? Or are they disenfranchised to the same extent as the Bill now seeks to marginalize talk therapy?
3. Gay Related Complex
When diving into the thick of it, what we see, each every time in a client, is a broad array of roughly 50 psychological issues and matters, many of which surprisingly contradict one another. We call this the Gay Related Complex. It is not a photo slide, it is a kaleidoscope. And the more you turn the tube, the more dazzling the sight is to behold.
Homosexuality as a supposed mono-dimensional entity is replaced by modern therapists with the multi-dimensional notion of an intricate complex, a cluster of sexual and above all non-sexual issues and phenomena. These are intertwined. They lead to homosexual behavior as a coping mechanism, a final common pathway (FCP).
Therapy aims to expand the array of ways out of the double-bind swamp, the unfathomable mire. It is a comforting thought, not because the coping mechanism is morally undesirable but because relieving the multitude of underlying psychological issues is interesting and a value in itself.
The aim is not to adjust the individual outwardly to perceived social norms but to alleviate inwardly the tensions and contradictions so that no more mental effort is wasted on energy-consuming contradictions stemming from cries out of an age-old inner well. And that deep reservoir of childhood perceptions has been nagging for ages. They were incomprehensible then, they can hurt today. Easy way out: stash them away.
4. Know thyself
The Ancient Greek aphorism “know thyself” (‘Nosce te ipsum’) is one of the Delphic maxims and was the first of three maxims inscribed in the pronaos of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi according to the Greek writer Pausanias. The two maxims that followed were: “nothing to excess” and “surety brings ruin”. This proposed Bill is excessive in its scope and the radical activists are so sure of themselves that they chisel their insights into stone forevermore. Knowing thyself is ruled out of existence by law.
5. Building-blocks
The Gay Related Complex creates a mind-game of building-blocks of frustration and powerlessness, ultimately making individuals prone to depression and anxiety states (the neurotransmitter brother of depression). They proceed on to become habits. Superficially, we would be gazing at personality disorders (“this is who I am”) which sounds alarming, but luckily, these are merely sub-optimal coping strategies, endlessly repeated in a computer script loop, a bug. These endless and compulsive repetitions can be alleviated through insight and therapeutic work.
That is a mouthful. The underlying mechanisms need to be explained slowly and understandably, and to be kept in tune with the paranoia and mistrust which is almost part and parcel in clients applying for therapy.
It is essential in therapy not to tackle the coping mechanism (the SSA’s) directly because they have a function, namely to alleviate distress. For the client, they are a lifesaver for mental equilibrium. It aggravates the distress if the client feels he is being robbed of something. This is the mistake made by many religious persons or groups who appear to be problematizing the SSA’s themselves.
Leave the SSA’s alone: focus on the elements of the Gay Related Complex and the body may very well find new copings mechanisms as the inner double-binds lose their pervasive power. The basic problem is the array of seemingly unsolvable double-binds, not the coping mechanism. You are not merely your coping mechanism, you are your coping mechanism and everything underneath.
It is rewarding to notice how a client spontaneously comes up with other possible coping mechanisms after a few weeks. Defensive detachments wither away on the long-trodden path of predictable self-images.
At the end of the day, sexuality will take care of itself. The label is not the goal of the therapist as radical activists fear. It is the path itself that is the goal. Down with this Bill, let inner freedom reign. Let us sit down and talk.
6. Conclusion
With the label “gay”, you are not a bommy old car that needs to be fixed. No one said such a thing, either. You need to lift up the hood, take a good long look at things, and, as a driver, get out from behind the steering wheel and see what is making all the noise while driving.
In our therapeutic work, we ask the automobilist to step out, not the prosecutor to step forward. The latter may say: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Yeah, but we can retort: “That there vehicle sure is making a helluva racket. It’s one big pandemonium down there, smoke, paradoxes, creepy stuff. Put your handcuffs away, get your overalls on, and join us under the hood”. It’s a software issue, we need to talk.
To be continued
Job Berendsen, MD.
