Dr. Nicholas Cummings
Posted on 06/05/2012 3:13:32 PM PDT by NYer
Dr. Nicholas Cummings
June 6, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A former president of the American Psychological Association (APA), who also introduced the motion to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness in 1975, says that the APA has been taken over by “ultraliberals” beholden to the “gay rights movement,” who refuse to allow an open debate on reparative therapy for homosexuality.
Dr. Nicholas Cummings was President of the APA from 1979 to 1980, and also served as a member of the organization’s Council of Representatives. He served for years as Chief of Mental Health with the Kaiser-Permanente Health Maintenance Organization, and is the author of the book “Destructive Trends in Mental Health: The Well-Intentioned Path to Harm.”
In an interview with representatives of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) in late April, Cummings said that the organization’s problems began with the rejection of the Leona Tyler Principle, which required that all public positions of the APA be supported by scientific evidence.
The APA “started changing pretty drastically by the late 1980s,” said Cummings. “By the mid 1990s, the Leona Tyler principle was absolutely forgotten, that political stances seemed to override any scientific results. Cherry-picking results became the mode. The gay rights movement sort of captured the APA.”
Cummings says that the movement for “diversity” in the APA, which he endorsed, had resulted in a lack of diversity regarding heterosexuals.
“If I had to choose now, I would see a need to form an organization that would recruit straight white males, which are underrepresented today in the APA,” he said.
Cummings says that he personally is not in opposition to the homosexual movement, including gay “marriage,” pointing out that he was the author of the motion to strike homosexuality from the APA’s list of mental illnesses. However, he is distressed at the loss of scientific objectivity at the organization.
“The first time it came up, and I was a member of [the] Council, this would have been, oh, 1975, because I remember that that’s when I made the resolution,” Cummings said. “I made the resolution that being gay was not a mental illness, that it was characterological. And it passed the Council of Representatives. And that was the first issue that came up. I also said with that, that the APA, if it passes this resolution, will also vote to continue research that demonstrates whatever the research demonstrates. Unbiased, open research. It was never done.”
In a second, briefer interview with NARTH on the same day, Cummings recalls his own work with homosexuals who wanted to leave the gay lifestyle during his tenure at Kaiser Permanente.
“It’s a difficult therapy, and it’s not huge in terms of numbers, but yes we have seen success, and this is why the stance that ‘you can never change’—Ronald Reagan said ‘never say never’—it’s absurd. All you have to do is find one exception and it knocks down the ‘never.’ But yes, I’ve experienced more than one exception,” said Cummings.
“Admittedly we had failures. The recidivism along the way with some would be intense, but we experience the same thing with treating substance abuse and alcoholism. Falling off the wagon is part of the treatment.”
Cummings’s position as a past president of the APA and as the author of the motion to remove homosexuality from the organization’s list of mental illnesses, parallels that of Dr. Robert Spitzer, past president of the American Psychiatric Association, who led the efforts there to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness two years earlier. Spitzer also became critical of the American Psychiatric Association in the following decades and authored a study in 2000 indicating that “highly motivated” homosexuals could be successful in altering their sexual preferences through reparative therapy.
Although Spitzer recently repudiated his study, which was published in the peer-reviewed Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2002, after years of pressure from homosexual activists, Cummings has never retracted his endorsement of the view that homosexuals can sometimes change.
Ping!
so what. anyone with any sense knew that psychology was an overhyped, self-important pseudo-science ages ago.
This is what happens when you treat wickedness as a mere psychological problem. He needs a spiritual perspective on life.
I remember when scientists (a group that used to include psychologists and climatologists) valued the scientific method. I guess that means I’m old.
And once more a blanket statement would toss out all the good that was done for the insane by “alienists.” You might be surprised to learn that what we know as psychology is older than Sigmund Freud, who actually hijacked older Christian ideas and set up a cockamamie mythology in what ought to have been viewed as a joke. But he grabbed the headlines.
How appropriate the quacks being run by SSADs. Both groups attempting to define every deviant behavior as normal.
Fake science at best, more like snake oil in reality. Psycho babble should be listed in the Yellow pages along with Palm and tea leaf readers.
Let me get this straight. The former president of the APA says he was the person who proposed the resolution to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness (without any scientific research) in the DSM...
““The first time it came up, and I was a member of [the] Council, this would have been, oh, 1975, because I remember that that’s when I made the resolution,” Cummings said. “I made the resolution that being gay was not a mental illness, that it was characterological. And it passed the Council of Representatives. And that was the first issue that came up. I also said with that, that the APA, if it passes this resolution, will also vote to continue research that demonstrates whatever the research demonstrates. Unbiased, open research. It was never done.””
But he’s now complaining that the APA doesn’t use the “Leona Tyler Principle” (which requires that all public positions of the APA be supported by scientific evidence)??
Seems to me he started the entire problem in the first place.
There's an inherent danger in thinking that everyone else needs to be fixed and "you" are the ones with the cure.
FYI ping
I can agree about mission creep. Any organization has that temptation to self aggrandization.
But classically, medical psychology was about people with problems too bad to be able to function well.
I haven’t read the DSM V yet. I suspect its crap. Its run by pharmaceutical companies.
A former president of the American Psychological Association (APA), who also introduced the motion to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness in 1975, says that the APA has been taken over by "ultraliberals" beholden to the "gay rights movement," who refuse to allow an open debate on reparative therapy for homosexuality.And beware the keyword trolls.
Deviancy is a moneymaker, for them.
Ultimately, the APA will try to claffify HOMOPHOBIA as a mental disorder.
My previous post had a typo. Claffify should have been Classify. Was not making fun of a lisp. LOL
In other words, the inmates are running the asylum.
Have some more pills, cut your tallywacker off, and experiment in unusual sex acts, maybe you’ll feel better in the end.
If not, you can always pay for more counseling to repeat this vicious cycle. If the pills don’t kill you.
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