Press Release
Leading UK psychology, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy organisations' statements on reparative therapy and sexual orientation
29 January 2013
The leading organisations in the UK for psychology, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy all have issued statements either opposing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or opposing 'reparative' or 'conversion' therapy.
The British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC) issued its position statement on homosexuality in 2011, stating that it opposes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. It does not accept that a homosexual orientation is evidence of disturbance of the mind or in development. In psychoanalytic psychotherapy, it is the quality of people's relationships which are explored, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual.
On 15 January 2013, the British Psychological Society (BPS) published a position statement opposing any psychological, psychotherapeutic or counselling treatments or interventions (often referred to as 'reparative' or 'conversion' therapies) that view same-sex sexual orientations (including lesbian, gay, bisexual and all other non-heterosexual sexual orientations) as diagnosable illnesses.
The UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) has campaigned for some years against 'reparative' therapy and issued guidance to its members in 2011. It believes that for a UKCP member to offer or conduct psychotherapy or psychotherapeutic counselling with the express aim of altering 'sexual orientation' is an ethical offence.
Speaking in early 2012, the Revd Canon, Adrian M Rhodes, who is President of the European Association of Psychotherapy, a UKCP member and former UKCP Vice-chair, said:
'Both psychotherapy/counselling and the religious quest, are powerful explorations of what it is to be human, in all its richness and diversity. They have much to offer each other and the interplay between these fields is profoundly enriching and enlightening. However, to use either activity as a covert way of achieving the aims of the other is both unworthy and unprofessional. It is as wrong to pursue through psychotherapy, a religious agenda which predetermines homosexuality as wrong, as it would be to use psychotherapy to define religious faith as pathological state to be eradicated.'
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