Mischel and self-discipline
Thank you for the "Acing the Marshmallow Test" in the December Monitor. It reminded me of a beloved clinical psychology professor I had years ago at the University of Georgia, John Hammes, PhD, who frequently noted that the only way to learn to be self-disciplined was to practice self-denial — it had to be practiced like any other skill you would want to learn and perfect. He did not advocate a life of self-denial; only, that to engage it, it was essential for it to be practiced and learned over time. As a corollary to this, Dr. Hammes believed that the truly disciplined person was indeed also a free person.
Given our current meet-my-need-immediately-society, self-discipline is a skill and behavior that we are regretfully losing or struggling to learn to begin with.
Rolffs Pinkerton, PhD
Duke University School of Medicine
Sexual reorientation
I found one paragraph troubling in the December article, "Preserving the past." In the context of Dr. Nicholas Cummings's endowment of psychology's history center, the article brought up the recent controversy caused by Dr. Cummings's views that it just may be possible, or at least not unethical, to try to change one's sexual orientation. The article then quotes APA's Public Interest director, Dr. Anderson, as saying, "The scientific evidence is insufficient to support such therapies, and promoting such therapies contributes to the societal stigma on homosexuality."
Therein lies the rub. The reason there is insufficient evidence to support sexual reorientation therapy is because APA, and the rest of the psychology academe, actively do not support, publish or lend credence to any research on this topic. The reason this is so is not necessarily because they are overwhelmingly certain that sexual reorientation therapy does not work, but because, as Dr. Anderson states, "promoting such therapies [would] contribute to the societal stigma on homosexuality."
That is, we, as a community who pride ourselves on being scientists, are allowing ourselves to suppress whole areas of potential research for the sake of our political views. I would argue that the failure of ethics is withholding therapy from people who seek it: refusing to allow (e.g., California state law) or refusing to research effective sexual reorientation therapy, for the sake of those who desperately seek it (e.g., those whose value system prohibits homosexual behavior).
Peryl Agishtein, PhD
Monsey, New York
Response from Dr. Clinton Anderson
In her letter, Dr. Agishtein focuses only on the scientific issue of effectiveness, but APA's position is also based on the scientific issue of safety — that some of the research has found that people who have undergone such therapies subsequently report that it was harmful to them. Furthermore, supporting clients in their efforts to fully explore conflicts between their sexual orientation and their religion are likely to address clients' distress without running the risk of harmful and ineffective efforts to change sexual orientation. Of course, the very notion of fixing sexual orientation suggests that homosexuality is an illness. APA does not believe it is.
