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from Interviews/Testimonials
The Power of Peer Rejection
Interview with Richard Fitzgibbons, M.D.
by Thomas Gregory, C.S.W.
Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons is Director of Comprehensive Counseling Services in West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. He has been practicing as a psychiatrist for twenty years, with a specialty in anger management.
Q. Dr. Fitzgibbons, when did you first become aware of NARTH?
A. About two years ago, through Father John Harvey. Father Harvey directs an international Catholic self-help group called Courage, which supports men who are struggling with same-sex attractions. Prior to that, I had done a fair amount of work with Father Harvey, consulting with clergy who have problems with homosexuality.
Q. You have said, in describing male homosexuality, that there are four associated psychological factors. What are they?
A. They are weak masculine identity, which is always the result of developmental trauma; mistrust of women; narcissism; and sexual addiction. I see those as the major conditions associated with male homosexuality.
Many other reparative therapists agree about the weak masculine identity, but my emphasis is a bit different. I focus more on the trauma inflicted on males by their boyhood peers because they were not athletically gifted. Usually, they could not play sports and subsequently were isolated, rejected, and ridiculed from a very early age.
This emphasis doesn't always center on the concept of the rejecting father. Some of these males I've worked with had fathers who accepted them.
For example, I had a new patient today, a college student, who had a fairly good, although not close, relationship with his father. But he never told his parents about the ridicule he experienced. Most kids who get ridiculed by their peers don't tell their parents because they are so terribly embarrassed. This patient's parents were waiting outside to join in the session, but the fellow wouldn't even let me mention the degree of ridicule and isolation he had experienced, or the fear he now has of straight males.
It's weak masculine identity and a tremendous sadness, and a tremendous fear of rejection, that makes these fellows very, very discouraged and hopeless and makes them very vulnerable to highly self-destructive behavior. Like this young man said to me--because I had just asked him about unprotected sex--he said, "Yeah, I engage in it, I don't care."
Q. It sounds almost like a suicidal ideation.
A. It's a certain hopelessness about life. There's a certain fear about never fitting in. By now, the peer rejection has stopped for him; it stopped pretty much by the time this young man got to high school. But there were eight years of pretty significant rejection because he didn't have eye-to-hand coordination, didn't play sports, and was most comfortable in female relationships.
Q. Did the father talk much during the first session?
A. The father was invited in at the end. The son wouldn't let me elaborate to his parents about the childhood trauma. The father is a doctor and--like a lot of fathers--he had worked very hard, both in his practice and teaching at a medical school. And he typically didn't get home until 9 o'clock at night, and he cared about the son, but he just was not ... he was very distant.
Q. How are the parents reacting to the fact that their son is seeking help in therapy?
A. Well, they're happy, but like so many parents, they are afraid of their son acquiring AIDS. And with this young man, there is a very strong possibility that he will acquire AIDS because his severe emotional pain leads him into drug and excessive alcohol use and promiscuous, unprotected sexual behavior. This kid is 19 years old, he knows all about AIDS, he knows how it's acquired...but as he said, he doesn't care.
There is a certain hopelessness that weighs them down, not because of anti-gay cultural pressure--but because of the way they were treated in boyhood, and now, the way they are being treated by the gay community. Although he does feel some sense of acceptance from other gays, they can be as critical of each other as his straight peers were to him in childhood.
So there's naturally not only hopelessness, but a lot of anger. I think a lot of the anger comes out in gay sex practices, like fisting and S & M, because these men have been violated emotionally by other boys in childhood.
I do a lot of work in the area of peer rejection, helping patients understand the depth of what that experience did to them in terms of their masculine identity. We work through it, helping them resolve their anger with the peers who betrayed them. We use a process of forgiveness and then, with a fellow like this or with other fellows, we sometimes use spiritual meditation to get them to reflect, "All right, these peers wounded me...but there was other love for me."
With this patient, I said to him, "Can you tell me any of your positive masculine qualities?" He's a very sharp, bright man. But he said, "No, I can't; I can't tell you any positive masculine qualities within me."
Q. That is sad.
A. He was a very engaging young man. It is very sad. He went to Catholic school for all of his education. So I said, "Do you have any sense that there is a God who's given you some gift?" He shrugged his shoulders. I said, "Well, you know, if you could, that could help you. That could help you if you get some sense, 'I have some masculine gifts that came from a God that made me that way.'"
For someone like him, I would--if he becomes open to it in time--I would present to him the whole healing process of resolving anger through forgiveness, and then using spiritual meditation.
People might say, "What's the basis for that meditation? Aren't you overreacting, bringing spirituality into treatment of emotional disorders?" I cite the doctor at Harvard Medical School named Herbert Benson. Benson has done a lot of work in the area of meditation. Whatever the patient's faith dimension is, he has them meditate in their faith twice a day, and he has had remarkable success in terms of physical healing. So, I encourage my patients to try to meditate twice a day.
Now a part of the whole healing process can also be the person finding within himself some anger at God. Why wasn't I given athleticism as an ability? Why did I have to be different? Sometimes they have to work through their anger at God. But in my experience, that can be a process to explore that can really strengthen masculine identity and give the person a feeling of having been loved during a time when he didn't feel love, during a time when he felt very afraid.
Q. It can fill a great void, I think.
A. Exactly.
Q. The love of a masculine God is also good for women struggling with this problem--for lesbians.
A. Yes. In my experience, the most common cause of lesbian attraction is mistrust of males either from an angry or alcoholic or abusive father, or having been hurt in a loving relationship with another significant male figure.
The college student I mentioned to you--his dad was a nice guy, but emotionally distant. Really not communicating, couldn't talk much with his son. A very successful professional man, but not terribly successful in his role as a father. In fact, I told this young guy today--I work with some younger boys, as does Dr. George Rekers at the University of South Carolina, using a different approach--but when I see that a young boy doesn't have athletic abilities, I try to get the father very, very involved in his life, try to get him to be very giving and affirming. The father can help his son grow in the belief that he has special masculine qualities--ones that are totally apart from athletic abilities. An involved father can do a lot to override the negative influence coming from other boys.
And sometimes, it's helpful to transfer the boy to another school where the social environment places less emphasis on sports.
Q. We have spoken before about how there are so many young women who turn sexually and romantically to other women today, because there are so many men now who are too narcissistic to relate emotionally to them.
A. Yes. The third most common cause of female homosexuality, as I see it, is simple loneliness--when a woman is waiting for the right guy and she's not able to find him. She's dealing with a lot of guys who are just immature, or weak, or just want to use women. And women become so lonely waiting for that one close friendship, that by default, they "back into" homosexuality. But I think narcissism does play a role in male homosexuality...in terms of the extraordinary promiscuity...maligning people's bodies and using them as objects.
Q. Yes. I've often been struck by looking at some of the gay literature and gay male pornography with its sheer emphasis on simple physicality.
A. Yes. I think many gays have such a weak masculine identity that they want to incorporate the other's masculinity. A lot of gay men crave the other person's body because they reject themselves so much. This is because many of them rejected early on by other boys, and sometimes by their fathers.
Q. How do you proceed with therapy?
A. My work is somewhat similar to work that is done in the treatment of alcoholism. Prior to adding the spiritual approach to the 12 Steps of AA, the treatment of alcoholism did not have a very good recovery rate.
Q. It was not good?
A. No. But when AA turned to a higher power and brought spirituality and God into the treatment, the recovery rate skyrocketed. And I find the same thing. When you can bring in the spiritual component, there's a significant degree of success. The vast majority of the patients I work with, when they persevere and they really work at it, don't give in to the narcissism. The emotional pain, the male insecurity, the mistrust of women, the mistrust of men, greatly diminish and if those emotional pains are healed, the homosexual attractions diminish, and may finally be extinguished.
Q. I think that the spiritual element is a great energizer.
A. It really is. It can feed the emptiness. Like this young man I saw today...I don't know what is going to fill that void of peer acceptance, or of father love, or of mother love. What will fill it?
It is emptiness that fuels so much of the rampant promiscuity and the inability to make a commitment to a relationship. Fewer than 10% of homosexuals can sustain relationships that last three years. Those that do, usually live in "open" relationships. They are open to numerous sexual partners.
Q. Which really isn't any kind of committed relationship at all.
A. No, and it's certainly no kind of relationship to bring an adopted child into.
Q. Has there been opposition to your work?
A. Yes, I've gotten some criticism, I'm sure.
Q. From other professionals, or from gay groups?
A. Not from gay groups, really. From members of P-Flag (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). I've gotten some criticism there, and some criticism from clergy who have been brainwashed to think the whole gay issue is, at heart, just a civil-rights issue.
Q. They mix the issues, the civil-rights issue and the emotional health issue.
A. Yes, exactly.
Q. And I think many of them have done it very deliberately. I think the American public at large is very confused about it.
A. Yes. There is a very strong movement within the Roman Catholic Church to undermine the teaching of the Church in the area of sexual morality. Particularly homosexuality. This group is led by New Ways Ministry and Father Bob Nugent. A number of bishops welcome him into their dioceses to give conferences for their clergy, and he really tries to undermine--in a subtle way--the teachings of the Church.
But I think to a lot of younger men especially, the gay lifestyle is really a lifestyle where they are used and abused. Where there is no stable commitment and there is a high risk of dying young, and a high risk of acquiring significant diseases.
Q. And the news media has a tremendous amount of influence, but there are a great many gay activists in the news media, and so it is very difficult to get this message across in television or in the newspapers.
A. Yes. We just had a major, three-day conference in Georgetown on homosexuality sponsored by the American Public Philosophy Institute. There were 35 well-known speakers and the conference was standing-room only, but we had almost no news coverage.
Q. That's amazing.
A. Yes. Almost no news coverage whatsoever. C-SPAN apparently was going to do it, but then they backed out--due, I believe, to pressure from gay groups. So there is a tremendous struggle to get the truth out here. We've got to work on it, because we really have got to protect the young.
We are trying to warn these public school boards in the United States that when they push the homosexual lifestyle as being as normal as the heterosexual lifestyle, their sex-education programs are actively funneling kids into gay support groups. In that process, they are depriving adolescents of informed consent about the promiscuity in that lifestyle, and the likelihood of acquiring STD's and AIDS. According to the book Sexual Ecology, 50% of those living a gay lifestyle may be HIV-positive by the age of 50. And with roughly 40% of gays engaging in unprotected sex, their chances of acquiring AIDS are very, very high.
Also, the problem of lack of stability in gay relationships...none of these things are taught in AIDS awareness programs, or in the new curriculums they are putting into schools. They don't teach the truth to kids about the homosexual lifestyle.
So we think school boards need to be warned that if they don't tell the whole story and these kids acquire AIDS, the Board of Education could be legally liable. It wouldn't surprise me if a parent whose son got AIDS, decided to sue the school board for encouraging their son to go to the Gay Community Services Center before he was old enough to know what he was getting into. In some school districts, AIDS education programs can actually border on recruiting.
Q. There was a big fight several years ago in New York City about the gay curriculum, and it was defeated. And I'm proud to say that several people in my area--my particular area in Queens--were central in that fight, and the fight was won. So it was marvelous.
You have also mentioned in the past about the lack of gender complementarity in gay relationships, and the lowered interest that lack engenders...impelling homosexuals into one liaison after another, to keep themselves feeling alive.
A. Yes. Kirk and Madsen, two homosexual men, wrote a book in 1990 called After the Ball, In it, they said just that: that homosexual sex is inherently boring because there is no complementarity.
Q. That was their statement?
A. Yes. I have handed out sections from that book to some patients I have treated.
Q. And this is a book defending the lifestyle?
A. Yes. Not only does it defend the lifestyle, it is the key book that lays out the civil-rights agenda for the 90's. They said that gays must emphasize to straights that there's no difference between heterosexuals and homosexuals.
A more recent book -- Sexual Ecology, by Gabriel Rotello--clearly describes the destructiveness in the homosexual lifestyle. It is a very important book written by a gay man who has a real passion for the truth. The major problem in spreading of AIDS, as Rotello says, has been group anal sex. That has been the new phenomenon since the sexual revolution of the 60's and 70's, and he's saying, "You can't do that--you've got to be responsible." The key factor in the development of AIDS is the number of sexual partners per year. Although AIDS awareness stresses condoms, it normally doesn't teach restraint against promiscuity.
And a gay lifestyle is a sexual addiction for many of these fellows. They engage in compulsive behavior, and they manifest massive denial about the dangers of their behavior. It is a profound addiction. There is a deep unhappiness. They try to get constant sexual highs to compensate for their unhappiness. It's sad.
Q. And you mention the element of hostility in a lot of sex practices like fisting.
A. Yes. As I said, many male homosexuals were ridiculed earlier by their peers because they weren't good in sports, or perhaps they were rejected by their fathers. A lot of these men have a significant amount of buried anger toward those who have hurt them, and I believe a lot of that anger comes out in sadomasochism and other sex practices. Especially through this technique of fisting, to shove your fist up somebody's rectum. I mean, that is an extraordinarily violent act. And in a lot of the other sadomasochistic behaviors, I think they misdirect the anger that is really meant for others who have hurt them. They also do it in a passive-aggressive way, by engaging in unsafe sex. They don't care. "Let somebody else, besides me, become HIV positive."
Q. How do you approach your patients initially--with the aim that you will help them change their homosexuality?
A. Well, particularly if it is a young person, I talk about the possibility of being exposed to AIDS. That is a major reason for parents asking their children to come and get a different opinion.
Now, most of these youngsters have been programmed by the culture to think homosexuality is genetic. And we know that there is no proven basis for homosexuality being based in the genes or a difference in the brain. An excellent article in Scientific American in November 1995 described the doubts the serious scientific community has about the LeVay and Hamer research.
What I do, is help them look at themselves to see if there was any emotional pain--and almost always there is, for males, almost overwhelming male rejection--except for rare cases where it's a mistrust of female love. And so we talk about the options. One is entering the gay lifestyle, with perhaps a 50% lifetime chance of becoming HIV positive; there's also a considerable risk of acquiring other diseases, and of having a life without a stable commitment.
I don't talk to them specifically about changing the lifestyle. I help them understand the emotional pain that fuels a lot of the compulsive and self-destructive and sadomasochistic behavior in that lifestyle.
Then, they have to make a decision: "What am I going to do? Am I going to see this psychiatrist and look at this emotional pain? Or am I just going to continue in a gay lifestyle?"
The fear of AIDS is motivating a lot of young men to reevaluate the lifestyle, and I think Gabriel Rotello's Sexual Ecology is very frightening...he describes phalanx after phalanx of adolescents coming into the homosexual lifestyle and being mowed down by the extremely irresponsible sexual behavior. He's calling gays to be accountable.
But what he fails to understand is that it is sexual addiction, it is narcissism, and it is emotional conflicts that drive the self-destructive behavior. You can't overcome sexual addiction unless you admit that you have major emotional conflicts.
Rotello seems to think that you can make a decision like, "Just say no." It's not that simple.
Q. No, it's not indeed. The root causes, too, have to be gone into.
A. Like this young man I saw today--he feels profoundly weak in his masculinity every day. He needs that male sexual fix to get a brief high, to get a brief sense of confidence, which never lasts. But if he could work at forgiving the guys who hurt him, and reflect more deeply -- "Wait a minute, it is God who has given me masculine gifts--my masculine gifts come first from God, not from my peers"--well, that understanding can really strengthen masculine identity significantly, and ultimately extinguish the need for this compulsive homosexual behavior.
Q. You mentioned that you had some foreign patients also.
A. I've consulted with some patients on the phone from overseas, yes. Some of them live in South America and England, where the inability to do well in sports caused them a lot of pain with their peers.
Andrew Sullivan in his book, Virtually Normal--he is a so-called Catholic writer who is asking the Church to be open to gay marriages--says, "Look, there really is no difference between a couple using contraceptives (who are not open to having children) and homosexual relationships, so why shouldn't the Church recognize homosexual couples?" It's an interesting argument.
But in the first chapter of his book, he talks painfully about how his peers rejected him at the age of ten, and one girl said to him, "Are you really a boy or are you a girl inside, because you don't play soccer?" So, yes, a lot of the fellows who can't play soccer in Spain or England or Buenos Aires, if you can't play soccer, you're viewed as being less than masculine, unfortunately. Something needs to be done about that in this sports-crazed world. But, yes, it's very traumatic for many fellows, especially in these sports-centered cultures, who don't have that athletic ability.
But like the fellow I saw today, if he had just told his father, maybe his father could have helped him with swimming or running or some other sport in which he could do well. But he kept himself isolated and suffered alone in silence.
Q. This combined approach of psychotherapy plus spiritual counseling--I think this approach has become very popular in the last few years. I spoke to a woman today on the phone who has a homosexual male friend of many years, and she told me that she was surprised to hear that he is going to a spiritual group for psychotherapy. I think the name of the group was Homosexuals Anonymous...
A. Yes, a very good group.
Q. It's here in New York, and I guess it is nationwide also.
A. Yes, it's international.
Q. And she was very surprised because he has been in the lifestyle for a long time, and now he is in this combination of psychotherapy and spiritual counseling. He said to her, "There was just something missing in my life."
A. There's a void.
Q. Yes.
A. A terrible void.
Q. Yes. A tremendous emptiness.
A. Yes...for so many people, there is a real emptiness there. A lot of men feel it. And a lot of men who are not homosexuals never had as much father love as they wanted, and are experiencing various types of conflict because of it. It may not show itself sexually. But for some, it is sexual. A number of guys I work with are heterosexually promiscuous because they feel inadequate and they need to have this constant score, so to speak, with women to boost their masculine identity. That is not unusual at all.
We see a really alarming level of anger in our young people today--in both boys and girls. It's due in part, I think, to the increase in homes without a father. There are so many kids today who live with constant conflict between their divorced or estranged father and mother--these kids are really "orphans with living parents." Many kids, not surprisingly, are extremely angry and are looking for a scapegoat to take it out on.
When fatherless boys grow up, there's often a tremendous hunger for male embrace because they weren't getting it at home. The gay hotlines get a lot of calls from men just hungry for a another man to hold them. Some of them are married, and they're not all necessarily homosexual. I think we're going to see more and more homosexual experimentation by young people, gay and straight, who are still looking for the fatherly love that they didn't get when they were growing up.
Q. How do you help your patients deal with the anger?
A. Letting go of the anger is the key. First, they have to understand the cause of the anger. There's usually been a void of peer acceptance and peer love. Then they have three options: they can deny their anger, express it, or forgive the guys who wronged them. I explain to them that if they hold on to this anger, they will be letting the people who hurt them, control them for the rest of their lives.
The key to forgiving is understanding--understanding why these other kids hurt them. Obviously, these other kids also had a sense of inadequacy that they, themselves, were dealing with.
I also encourage physical activity like jogging and swimming to enhance the patient's sense of well-being, and I encourage healthy non-sexual male relationships. They work on strengthening their masculinity and identifying the positive masculine traits they already possess, which they usually have completely failed to recognize.
In the twenty years I've been in practice, I've seen significant numbers of men resolve their anger over these old peer conflicts, peer inadequacies and peer sadnesses, and then move on to genuinely resolve their homosexual problems.
Updated: 3 September 2008
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