NCSF Petition to get the DSM standards on paraphilia revised

[Netzach]

There are some really crappy people in practice who force their agenda and beliefs on clients. Personally, I think they should be forced out of the field. I have spent hours with clients who've been damaged by previous therapists, and I've filed complaints against them.

I may not agree with everything my clients do, but if it works for them it's not a problem for me.

That's pretty much how the therapist I wound up with feels about it.

That's not a majority of people in the field IME. It was VERY hard to find her. I was never abused in any way or messed up worse by it, but it did cause me to end therapy sooner than I might have with one therapist (CBT worked well for me and then she wanted to do digging stuff and that's when my sexuality magically became a problem) and caused me to reject a number of people, costing time, money, and delaying therapy.

This is still very common to gay people, bisexual people, crossdressers, and SM people I know. What the therapist is supposed to do is overwritten by bias.

It's time, as Homburg said, to look for the problems that are problems for the person not a set of "gee this isn't normal for a middle class straight white man" flags.

 

[vampire28]

That's pretty much how the therapist I wound up with feels about it.

That's not a majority of people in the field IME. It was VERY hard to find her. I was never abused in any way or messed up worse by it, but it did cause me to end therapy sooner than I might have with one therapist (CBT worked well for me and then she wanted to do digging stuff and that's when my sexuality magically became a problem) and caused me to reject a number of people, costing time, money, and delaying therapy.

This is still very common to gay people, bisexual people, crossdressers, and SM people I know. What the therapist is supposed to do is overwritten by bias.

It's time, as Homburg said, to look for the problems that are problems for the person not a set of "gee this isn't normal for a middle class straight white man" flags.

On the whole, I agree with you. It can be difficult to find a therapist who is open to the "less than normal". However, I do think a lot of it depends on where you are located. Smaller cities and more conservative areas of the country tend to draw the more limited people who go into the field. That's a damned shame.

Part of the problem lies in the way we train therapists. Too many people get into programs for the wrong reasons -- they want to "fix" the deviates or use therapy to bring people around to their way of thinking. Good training programs weed these people out. Good training programs have course work in sexuality, multiculturalism and diversity, and ethics. Good training programs stress the importance of letting the client find his/her own definition of what's right and respecting that.

Not all training programs are good programs, unfortunately.

This is why clients have to be good consumers and not stay with a therapist that doesn't respect their choices.

I'm glad you found someone who does respect your choices.

 

[Toa_lin]

On the whole, I agree with you. It can be difficult to find a therapist who is open to the "less than normal". However, I do think a lot of it depends on where you are located. Smaller cities and more conservative areas of the country tend to draw the more limited people who go into the field. That's a damned shame.

Part of the problem lies in the way we train therapists. Too many people get into programs for the wrong reasons -- they want to "fix" the deviates or use therapy to bring people around to their way of thinking. Good training programs weed these people out. Good training programs have course work in sexuality, multiculturalism and diversity, and ethics. Good training programs stress the importance of letting the client find his/her own definition of what's right and respecting that.

Not all training programs are good programs, unfortunately.

This is why clients have to be good consumers and not stay with a therapist that doesn't respect their choices.

I'm glad you found someone who does respect your choices.

And even the best courses, sometimes let some of the craftier bad apples through anyway. So it's always a chance, but things do seem to slowly be getting better. Sadly, there's still just too much of the bad out there. Especially in more "conservative" parts of the world. (e.g. states, provinces, counties etc.)