Telling a poor man he can become rich: Reparative therapy in contemporary Poland

Abstract

This article investigates the practice of sexual reorientation therapy, or reparative therapy (RT), in contemporary Poland. Focusing on three groups – Odwaga (Courage), Pomoc 2002 (Help 2002) and Pascha (Passover) – and informed by interviews with their past participants, it examines the ways in which RT in Poland is gendered, as well as investigating the individualizing and self-responsibilizing understandings of the self it rests on. This article then demonstrates how the neoliberal ideas of selfhood permeate the practice of RT, mobilizing the tropes of individual effort and responsibility for the reorientation of one’s sexual desire, obscuring the inherent inequality on which the practice is based.

Keywords

Homosexuality individualization Poland reparative therapy self-responsibilization

Introduction

Currently, no scholarly analysis exists of reparative therapy (RT) in Poland, except for Dorota Hall’s (2017) recent work which, as insightful as it is, does not go beyond the representation of the practice in the public sphere. Addressing this research gap, this article focuses on three main RT groups in Poland – Odwaga (Courage), Pomoc 2002 (Help 2002) and Pascha (Passover). RT is premised on the conviction that humans are inherently heterosexual and that homosexuality is a developmental disorder that can and should be treated. It has been studied extensively in the US where scholars have explored its various aspects, including its theoretical origins (Drescher, 2002), ethics (Halpert, 2000), politics (Grace, 2008), gender bias (Robinson and Spivey, 2007) and the particular way in which the stories of RT participants are constructed (Creek, 2014; Creek and Dunn, 2012; Ponticelli, 1999). Tanya Erzen’s (2006) work on the ex-gay New Hope ministries in the US also examines the convergence of RT with self-help (see Chapter 5 in particular). However, the collusion with neoliberal ideas and ideals of selfhood in RT remains unexamined. This article builds on the existing knowledge of RT, further exploring its gendered dynamics, but also goes further by linking the practice of RT to a specific, neoliberal understanding of the self as a project that is enacted through psychotherapeutic self-governance. Theoretically, this article proposes that to make sense of RT we need to see it in relation to the neoliberal discourses of the self – self-responsibilization and individualization¹ – which in RT are extended to questions of sexual orientation. This article argues that RT is a technology of the self that operates at the intersection of religious practice and the secular practice of therapy, and that it also exemplifies how neoliberal ideas of the self intermingle with existing regimes of patriarchal power. The traditional, heterosexist and male-centred ideas around gender roles and family that RT reproduces exemplify the latter.

The three groups in question vary in terms of their institutionalization: Odwaga is arguably the most established, with headquarters in Lublin and close ties to the Church. Pascha, despite having some form of central management structure, is very much a locally driven initiative. Pomoc 2002 is a group centred around one man, who runs and controls it from his flat in Radom, a medium sized city in east-central Poland. The level and kind of engagement that participants have with the groups also vary. Whilst Odwaga has a structured programme of weekend workshops that span the year in support and therapeutic groups, Pascha is more of a self-help group focused around regular meetings and locally-organized activities, whereby one of the participants functions as a leader; there is also no limit to how long participants can stay in the group.² Finally, in Pomoc 2002, participants attend weekend workshops where they stay over in the leader's flat and take part in talking group therapy as well as one-on-one sessions with the leader. In addition, Pascha runs yearly retreats that all members are expected to attend; similarly, Pomoc 2002 runs occasional retreats. It is Pascha that is the biggest of the three, with three local groups across the country at the time of writing. Finally, all three groups are fee-paying, though their prices vary, with Odwaga being the priciest option, followed by Pascha.

Nevertheless, Odwaga, Pomoc 2002 and Pascha collude in their aims (helping individuals to deal with ‘unwanted same sex attraction'), ideological foundations (a conviction that homosexuality is a treatable disorder), gender politics and their methods – it is these two last aspects that this article focuses on. By examining these elements, this article investigates the particular vision of the self that RT groups reproduce and promote. It also discusses the way in which RT exposes certain subjects to potentially harmful practices that for some cause long-term damage, adding to their feelings of maladjustment and lack of self-acceptance.

RT in context

RT’s modern era began in 1973 in the US when homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association. In the US, RT has been influenced mostly by theories of writers like Irving Bieber, Charles Socarides, Joseph Nicolosi and Richard Cohen (Drescher, 1998). These authors oppose the view of homosexuality as natural and argue that heterosexuality is the biological norm and that ‘every homosexual is a latent heterosexual’ (Bieber, 1962: 220). RT views family relations and parental influence as decisive factors in fostering homosexuality in boys and argues that homosexual men are raised by overprotective and dominant mothers and distant, weak or detached fathers (Socarides, 1968: 32). The focus of RT is to revert the damage done by these factors and to help individuals reconnect with their heterosexual selves. Reparative therapists also argue that male homosexuality is a deficit in masculine identity ‘rooted in a sense of gender-identity deficit, and representative of a drive to “repair” that deficit’ (Nicolosi, 2009).

RT has been critiqued extensively in the US (see for example Grace, 2008; Halpert, 2000) and it has also suffered setbacks, with an increasing number of states taking steps to regulate it. Nevertheless, US RT organizations continue to seek new markets internationally to promote their particular vision of homosexuality. The National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), cofounded by Nicolosi and Socarides in 1992, manifests its global aspirations through a feature on its website that provides resources in eight languages (including Polish) and NARTH’s international division – the International Federation for Therapeutic Choice – which was formed ‘to give a greater voice to therapists, academics, and interested individuals located outside the United States … and to defend the rights of therapists to treat unwanted homosexuality throughout the world’ (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, 2017). Despite the closing down of Exodus International, another significant player in the US context – whose activities were restricted to North America – it is business as usual for Exodus Global Alliance (EGA), an umbrella organization for RT groups around the world (Exodus Global Alliance, 2013). EGA’s website provides a multitude of resources, including articles, books, video tutorials and translations into 11 languages (Exodus Global Alliance, 2015). It is through the activities of US RT organizations that RT has made its way to Poland.

In 2004, Cohen was invited to hold a talk at the Polish Parliament. He delivered a presentation in which he called upon the Polish Parliament to give him US$10 million to ‘heal’ Polish homosexuals (Kitlinski and Leszkowicz, 2005). Cohen justified his request thusly: ‘The reason I ask for ten million dollars is because we need to create social organizations to help homosexuals to change’ (Cohen, cited in Kitlinski and Leszkowicz, 2005: 28). Besides Cohen and his International Healing Foundation, at least two other major American RT organizations engaged in promotional campaigns in Poland; Regeneration Ministries held a conference in Warsaw in 2008, whilst Nicolosi of NARTH held one in Poznań in 2011. The three Polish RT organizations – Odwaga, Pomoc 2002 and Pascha – that this article focuses on are to a large extent a result of those interventions and as such they draw heavily on theories of US Reparative Therapists.

While the growth of RT has been rather contained in Poland, the number of RT groups remains relatively stable.³ Moreover, in the summer of 2017, Odwaga was awarded the Truth-Cross-Liberation award for ‘spiritual and therapeutic help for people with unwanted same sex attractions and their families’ (TVP Info, 2017). The award ceremony took place in the Ministry of Development and the current president, Andrzej Duda, sent a letter to all present at the event (TVP Info, 2017). This event is not only symptomatic of the current political climate around LGBT issues in Poland, but it also signals that groups like Odwaga are well established. What enables their operation is a combination of factors, including a lack of regulation of therapeutic practices aimed at reorientation, continuously high levels of homophobia (Takács and Szalma, 2011), a history of pathologization of homosexuality under state socialism (Owczarzak, 2009) and the strong position of the Roman Catholic Church, with the Vatican’s view of homosexuality as a disorder remaining intact to this day (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1975). The conservative stance of the Church on issues of LGBT equality is particularly relevant here, considering that religion is central to all of the RT groups in question. Over the last few decades, the Catholic Church in Poland has become particularly invested in a hard-line anti-LGBT stance and it has been repeatedly listed as a major source of discrimination against LGBT people (Kościańska, 2012), whilst its involvement in matters of gender and sexual politics has been continuous (Graff, 2014; Zawadzka, 2010).⁴

Methods

This article is based on: a) semi-structured in-depth qualitative interviews with eight Polish men who in the past belonged to one or more of the above-mentioned RT groups, and with one person who used to be involved in running one of the groups; and b) discourse analysis of the websites of these groups and of the testimonies published on these websites. The article uses the testimonies as repositories of ideas of what success and working towards it is imagined to look like – as stories carefully selected for publishing by the people behind the RT groups to convey a message and to advertise to new participants. The gendered aspect of RT, which will be discussed below, is also reflected in the testimonies; of the three groups, only Odwaga features testimonies written by women.

The interviews were part of a larger study (Mikulak, 2017b) for which the author conducted fieldwork in Poland, between June 2015 and April 2016. The initial participants were recruited through LGBTQ organizations; prior to the fieldwork, seven different LGBTQ organizations were invited by the author to participate in the study on RT and the broadly understood LGBTQ movement in Poland. Six organizations responded, of which two put the author in contact with people who have either taken part in an RT programme or had an interest in or knowledge of the practice. From these initial meetings there was an element of snowballing, and further participants were recruited who no longer had any links to the LGBTQ organizations.

Overall, eight men aged 23–42 who have gone through the programmes of at least one of the RT groups in question were interviewed. The language of the interviews was Polish and all participants were native Polish speakers. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. Extracts of the transcribed interviews were then translated into English. The interviews lasted from two to three hours. The broad topics covered in the interviews were as follows:

Length of participant’s involvement with the group

Path towards RT / Rationale behind joining a group

Expectations of the group

Assessment of RT

Perception of/experience with LGBTQ organizations in Poland

Outness

Before the interview, all participants were provided with information about the study. At the start of each meeting, the participants were also given a printed consent form to sign. This form asked them to confirm that they had read and understood the information given to them about the study and specifically that their participation in the study was voluntary, that they had the right to withdraw from the study at any point or to refuse to answer a specific question without having to justify their decision to do so and that all data produced would be made anonymous. It also reminded the participants that they have a right to ask questions about the study. All information obtained during the interviews has been made anonymous, and participants’ names have been changed to protect their anonymity.

Finally, this article draws on the interviews with people with first-hand experience of RT and as such their stories constitute the basis of the arguments made. Their narratives are often constructed in a particular way, similar to the identity work that SJ Creek (2014) describes in her article on former members of Exodus in the US; their narratives follow a pattern of entering into RT and trying to make sense of their experiences in that context and then leaving and rebuilding their identities, both sexual and religious. However, as this articles shows, this process is more successful for some than for others, and the lasting damage of RT is an element that deserves consideration. Still, given the small number of participants this article is based on, the picture of the practice of RT that emerges is a detailed one but one that is necessarily fragmentary, and it is thus crucial that any future studies provide a more extensive mapping of the practice of RT in Poland.

RT as a technology for self-governance

Poland’s transition from state-socialism to market democracy has been marked by its strongly neoliberal character. The profound changes that it brought not only affected the economy and the political sphere, but also required, in the words of Elizabeth Dunn (2004: 6), a change to the ‘very foundations of what it means to be a person’. The new neoliberal order called for individuals who are accountable, responsible and self-managing (Dunn, 2004: 7; see also Stenning et al., 2010). It has thus been argued that the political and moral economy of neoliberalism in Poland, and elsewhere, promotes individual responsibility for ‘health, wealth and welfare' (Stenning et al., 2010: 34), and one of the ways in which the impact of neoliberalism on the subjectivities of people who live under its conditions has been theorized is through the lens of governmentality.

It is Michel Foucault’s (1988a, 1988b) work in particular that informs much of the writing on the way self is theorized in relation to neoliberalism today. For Foucault, governmentality is a mode of rule that stands for the regimes and strategies aimed at directing the practices of ‘free' individuals in their relations to each other (Foucault, 1988b: 19–20). Following Foucault, Louis McNay (2009: 57) argues that in neoliberal order social control operates through ‘individualizing, disciplinary mechanisms that shape the behaviors and identity of the individual through the imposition of certain normalizing technologies or practices of the self'. Neoliberal individualization results in the flourishing of what Foucault referred to as ‘techniques of the self', which he argued:

… permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality. (Foucault, 1988b: 18)

It is the care of the self viewed through the prism of medical metaphors of health that encouraged the view of the self as sick and in need of correction (Foucault, 1988a). This article argues that RT is such a technique of the self, aimed at correcting the ‘sick’ self. It is enacted through psycho-therapeutic self-governance, and very much in line with the neoliberal idea of personhood. The work of Nikolas Rose (1999a, 1999b) on self-governance through psychotherapeutics and Eva Illouz’s (2007) intervention on emotional capitalism are particularly suited to analyze the mechanisms at work in RT; the first one captures the allure of psychotherapeutics to the modern self, the second links them back to the logic of the market.

Rose investigates how the psycho-sciences influence the ways in which we think of ourselves. He argues that these sciences enable us to strive for autonomy and ‘make it possible for all of us to make a project out of our biography' (Rose, 1999a: 258). He argues that through psychotherapeutics, ‘selves dissatisfied with who they are can engage in projects to refurbish and reshape themselves in the directions they desire' (Rose, 1999a: 232); a point that is of particular relevance in relation to RT's project of ‘restoring’ the heterosexual self. At the same time, for Rose, the self is not merely enabled to choose; it is obliged to do so (Rose, 1999a: 231), whilst ‘psychotherapeutics provide' it with the ‘technologies of individuality' for its ‘production and regulation' (Rose, 1999a: 232). Thus, a noticeable contradiction emerges – individuals are constructed as free, but an obligation to choose and self-regulate is imposed on them.

Whilst Rose’s work is insightful, there are some issues with his insights on the way the self is made and re-made with the aid of psychotherapeutics; describing the genesis, logic and allure of psychotherapeutic self-governance, Rose extends it to everyone, and thereby does not acknowledge how it might be classed, raced or otherwise marked with difference at any point in the process. Yet, as Illouz demonstrates, access to psychological knowledge is not class neutral, and as such it has the potential to ‘stratify different forms of selfhood’ (Illouz, 2007: 71). Nevertheless, what Rose does achieve is to accurately capture the promise of the psycho-sciences – which as this article will demonstrate reverberates in the project of RT – even if he does not then investigate the moments in which they turn out to be empty, simply irrelevant or directly harmful. Rose argues that the psycho-sciences are responsible for the proliferation of technologies of the self, and whilst he does not explicitly mention it, he demonstrates how these in turn are in line with the neoliberal ordering of society and the self. He states:

Psychotherapeutics is linked at a profound level to the socio-political obligations of the modern self. The self it seeks to liberate or restore is the entity able to steer its individual path through life by means of the act of personal decision and the assumption of personal responsibility. (Rose, 1999a: 258)

There are a couple of important points raised here that are relevant to thinking through RT. Firstly, the very idea of RT rests on the assumption that there is a self that needs restoring. Secondly, the responsibility for seeking out, implementing and undertaking the necessary corrective work is placed exclusively with the individual, reverberating the neoliberal mantra of the self-made and self-governed individual. Moreover, the first aspect – the self in crisis – is symptomatic of what Illouz (2007: 108–109) terms ‘emotional capitalism’, in which emotions ‘have become entities to be evaluated, inspected, discussed, bargained, quantified and commodified’. The resulting self is a suffering one, ‘organized and defined by its psychic lacks and deficiencies’, which, crucially, is ‘incorporated back into the market through incessant injunctions to self-change and self-realization’ (Illouz, 2007: 109).

RT has been critiqued as an ideology masquerading as science. If this metaphor were to be extended, one could say that the clothes that RT is dressed up in belong undoubtedly to the psycho-sciences. It is through the heritage, vocabulary and methods of the psycho-sciences that RT becomes intelligible, and it is through them that it makes its claims to validity. The same is true for RT in Poland – the methods used and structures within which these are applied are a combination of group and individual therapy.

RT is also a project that individuals embark on and one that requires a huge amount of effort and dedication. As evidenced in online testimonies, the success of this project is dependent first and foremost upon individual work done by the participants:

The decision to join a group, but most of all asking for help and daily work with oneself … they require courage and heroism … it's better to change oneself than to expect others to change … I was warned that the road will be long and nothing is guaranteed. (Romek’s testimony, Pascha, 2013)

Faith, work on oneself, stubbornness, not giving up in difficult situations and giving oneself a bit of time really helps … It took me 6 years, but of course you can do it in a relatively shorter time. It depends on you, on your engagement and on drawing conclusions from each fall. (Jędrek’s testimony, Pomoc 2002, 2010)

In the quotes above, the themes of self-discipline, individual work and personal responsibility for the success of RT are emphasized. Interviews with men who took part in the RT programmes in Poland confirm that the idea of personal responsibility and commitment are central to taking part in an RT group. It might be argued that RT's promise is attractive precisely because it resonates with the familiar notion that people are in a position to influence their fate and lives if only they try and work hard enough. Kamil aptly describes how Pascha's programme and RT theories appealed to him at the time of joining the group: ‘Actually, the programme was convincing, that [idea], that it's possible to change something, and that … it is within reach, depending on how much work we put into it, and our own commitment, so it simply did convince me’ (Kamil, past RT participant, 2015).

Consequently, the responsibility for bringing about the change and for shaping one's own destiny is placed with an individual and their ability to face the challenge, adapt and take appropriate action, down to – as this article demonstrates next – the most minute choices; a notion that chimes with the neoliberal vision of the self.

Disciplining the self

For me … the first contact with the group was in a way symbolic … I travelled to the mountains and the conditions were still winter-like and I trekked on an unblazed trail … and it was a very hard and difficult trail. Why am I talking about this? Cause in a way, to me, it later became a symbol of work on myself in the group, that it was going to be a very difficult task, slow and painful, demanding many sacrifices. (Kamil, past RT participant, 2015)

The above quote from Kamil points to the effort that it takes to embark on the path of RT. It echoes the theme of demanding, long-term work and self-sacrifice that is central to how RT is also presented in the online testimonies mentioned above. The work that takes place in an RT programme is multifaceted: the duty to have a spiritual guide, most often a priest, as well as a therapist (mandated by Pascha), and the regular meetings with the group provide the framework within which RT is administered; it is, however, in the souls, bodies and bedrooms of RT participants that the real work takes place. The level of detail and self-scrutiny required is illustrated well by the original daily score card one of the participants brought to the interview; filling it out was part of his participation in Pascha's programme (Figure 1). The score card starts with the question ‘Have you done your homework?' and gives a 1–10 scale on which one is to self-assess one's performance within the listed daily tasks (‘Codzienne zadania', column 1, in Figure 1) throughout each day of the week (columns 2–8); the tasks translate as follows: caffeine-free, healthy food, sleep, physical exercise, prayer, gratitude, reading of the Scripture, meditation, visualization of the goal, keeping a diary, responsibility/confession, healthy risk-taking, expressing one's emotions, openness, honesty, being of service/giving, social relation, entertainment, sexual purity, homosexual arousal, other. What is interesting here is that on the scale given, ‘1’ does not simply stand for failure, but rather, it is described as a ‘serious amount of work needed’, urging the participant to make more effort. This comprehensive system of self-monitoring of the body and soul is illustrative of the approach which is at the heart of RT programmes, demanding huge amounts of discipline, self-scrutiny and commitment.

Figure 1.

Daily score card from Pascha.

The idea of individual, long-term effort and exercise in self-control that the above score card represents is reiterated in the interviews conducted with past RT participants. Indeed, one of the participants, who used to run a support group at Odwaga, compared the multifaceted work required to that of the training of an Olympian (Wojciech, past RT group organizer, 2015). By breaking the task into smaller, arguably more manageable, tasks, participants can exercise a level of control over their bodies and minds through a set of everyday operations and choices. Importantly, daily monitoring of the ‘tasks' is done not for the purpose of external validation – the score card was not assessed by or shared with others – assessment and validation happened internally, making RT a perfect example of an exercise in self-management. What is needed is discipline and resolve. However, at times, even with full commitment, the changes that happen are not the ones that RT promises; Aleksander discusses the results of the long-term effort undertaken thusly:

I almost got my homosexual feelings down to zero … because, if you do not watch TV … at the time I had no internet, I was reading those [RT] books, I got up early, I went to mass, I read the Bible, I ate correctly, I lived frugally, so it is natural that your sexual drive can be more easily tamed, when you do not provide it with any stimuli. (Aleksander, past RT participant, 2015)

Aleksander managed to suppress his sexual drive; yet, as he puts it, ‘it was the going from zero to plus’, meaning feeling sexually attracted to women, that proved impossible (Aleksander, past RT participant, 2015). It is clear that a lot of physical, mental and emotional work is required to ‘do' RT properly. Concurrently, the multitude of tasks to monitor and perform makes it a site that is set up for failure for most. And even those who commit to this superhuman effort and comply with the demands placed on them are left with doubts as to whether they have in fact done enough, or whether they are actually there yet, in particular if the change does not materialize. Aleksander illustrates this well when he describes his self-assessment of the RT programme:

There was this option that when someone feels ready to leave the group, there was this table to fill out. And I looked at it, and initially it surprised me … I had it all … I couldn't find any shortcomings in myself. (Aleksander, past RT participant, 2015)

Nevertheless, it is evident that from avoiding caffeine, to a ban on masturbation, RT programmes are exercises in self-management. What cannot be denied is that RT participants are entrepreneurs of the self in a truly neoliberal sense. It is therefore only in the logic of neoliberalism that we can make sense of the following quote from Miłosz's testimony:

Do not treat homosexual tendencies as something that cannot be changed. Because it is the same as telling a poor person: 'Man, you were born poor and you will stay that way. There is no point to work, because you will never make it’. But it is possible to make it and become rich. (Miłosz’s testimony, Pomoc 2002, 2015)

Whilst this testimony perfectly sums up the ways in which RT colludes with and reproduces the neoliberal narrative of selfhood, the complete inattention to structural inequalities it signals makes it sound both daring and naïve. When all is said and done, the failure to change one's orientation is constructed as a result of one's own inability to work, try and pray hard enough, leaving the essential injustice of the practice intact. What this article discusses next is the group character of RT.

RT as a group practice

The centrality of self-discipline to the project of RT is consolidated through compulsory group retreats, where participants are expected to take part in a tightly packed programme of religious rituals, therapy and sport. As descried by Bartek: ‘They were formative meetings; let's call them religious, psychotherapeutic ones … There was of course also physical activity, obviously early in the morning, as it would be done in a military camp’ (Bartek, past RT participant, 2016). Also, it is through the retreats and regular contact with the groups that participants can share, compare and assess their progress. Nevertheless, the men interviewed for this article have largely described the social aspects of being a member of an RT group as a positive experience, and many have formed lasting friendships (or even fallen in love!) with other group members that outlived their commitment to reorientation efforts. For many, contact with the group was the first time they had met people who like them were struggling to reconcile their faith with their sexuality. For some it was also the first time ever that they had met other homosexual men. However, what is also important in relation to RT as a group practice is its responsibilizing nature that obliges one to confess to one's peers. This is not unlike mainstream group therapy; Rose describes the dynamics of a therapeutic group thusly: ‘[C]ircle of chairs in a therapeutic group … constitute[s] the subject as one responsible to its self because it is responsible to others, incorporating each person into a democratic field of confession and judgment’ (Rose, 1999a: 250). Similarly, by joining an RT group, people agree to enter such a circle of confession and judgment, and to subject themselves to a collective scrutiny at a level previously unknown to them. Indeed, for some participants the level of disclosure expected in the group was difficult at first, as described by Piotr:

Piotr: To open up to talk about one's problems … That was the biggest challenge …

Author: Were there many situations when this was required?

Piotr: No, nobody was forcing anyone … We met in the group and everyone who wanted could talk about themselves, but it was not necessary. But if someone does not talk about themselves, well then generally they don't benefit from certain things, right? (Piotr, past RT participant, 2016)

What is interesting in Piotr’s account is how it captures the subtle way in which the obligation to share with the group is made into a personal choice to do so. Once the discomfort of disclosure is overcome, the group becomes a space for sharing as well as a site of investment, where the benefits you reap are proportional to how much you are willing to ‘invest', meaning also to disclose. At the same time, the expectation that one reveals the most intimate details of one's life functions as a disciplining mechanism. The group also has the right to exclude members who they see as not committed enough, based for instance on attendance; this is particularly valid for Pascha, which has more of a democratic character compared to the two other groups. But for all three groups in question, taking part in group therapy means that participants monitor themselves as well as other members of the group.

The level of control exercised by the group can also take more oppressive forms, as in Pomoc 2002, where the participants were expected to not only report whether they masturbate, but were also financially penalized when they did:

Rafał: I found out that you have to pay if you masturbate; it was 75 or 150 zlotys, something like this …

Author: Depending on?

Rafał: […] I think it was like that … that if you feel the need to masturbate then you can call another member of the group, and if I call and then do it [masturbate] it would cost 75 zlotys, and if I won't call and masturbate then it's 150. (Rafał, past RT participant, 2015)

Despite the obvious issue with the ethics of such practice, what is also striking is the at least seemingly voluntary character of this rule; once again it is left up to the individual to self-report to their peers and face the consequences. The control happens at an individual level, and is only effective when its mechanisms and rationale are internalized; here again, self-governance is enacted. But what are the actual results of such efforts to self-govern and manage through RT, and what effect does it have on the people who decide to undergo this demanding process?

Lasting damage of RT

I made the effort of working on myself, and definitely I developed somehow … Certainly there was a moment when I regretted, I mean, regretted that it did not work, right? And I was wondering why [it didn't]. (Kamil, past RT participant, 2015)

None of the past RT participants interviewed reported having been ‘cured' in the process. At the same time, most of the participants were quite outspoken about the damage done by the practice, even if at times they were also able to find some positive aspects of their engagement with the groups, or of some parts of the therapeutic process. Many stressed the way in which, having ‘failed’ at RT, they went through a prolonged period of self-doubt and at times also depression. Some were able to move on from the experience but years later still felt that what happened to them in the process of RT was a form of injustice, particularly in relation to what they saw as the empty promises that were made to them. This point is well illustrated by Aleksander’s account of how he sees his experience of being in Pomoc 2002 and then in Pascha retrospectively:

[T]his promising, it's a huge injustice [pauses]. I have experienced a certain injustice. Promising young people – cause I was young, religious – [so] making these empty promises … Promising changes … Here a proposal is made, that we know [the cause of homosexuality] and we know how to cure it, right? (Aleksander, past RT participant, 2015; emphasis in original)

For people like Aleksander, it was important to take part in the interview as he saw it as attending to some unfinished business he had with the organizations that he felt had wronged him. On another occasion, a different participant said that agreeing to be interviewed about the time in RT was a form of providing closure for what had been a difficult and eventually a deeply disappointing experience:

I spent a long time trying to figure out what happened there [in the RT group]. I think I am still working on it, so when I got the email [from another participant who recruited Szymon for the study] I thought, right, it’s time to get this out and done with once and for all. (Szymon, past RT participant, 2016)

Furthermore, even if some participants have come to accept their sexuality, others were still struggling with it years after they stopped RT. Whilst some saw RT as a difficult but somehow necessary part of their self-acceptance process, whereby having tried it allowed them to finally dismiss it and rethink the way they saw themselves (similarly to former members of Exodus, in the Creek (2014) study), others felt that it was a setback that deepened their feelings of maladjustment and left them confused, hurt or angry – at times at themselves. For example, Bartek considers his inability to form a happy relationship to be one of the lasting consequences of RT, and he links it to the internalization of homophobia that taking part in an RT group consolidated. He considers this to be the case not just for him, but also for other men he met in the process:

Bartek: A large proportion of people remain in this state of suspension, so they either don't accept themselves and still try do something about it … or they simply live as singles. Few are in relationships, in some kind of relatively stable homosexual ones … so the majority are the people who … are lonely, and with various levels of acceptance or non-acceptance of who they are …

Author: Do you think that this is a result of being in this kind of group?

Bartek: I think so, well, I think [pauses] … Somebody I know said that if someone has actually tried reparative therapy they will never be happy in a homosexual relationship and I would kind of agree with that. I can see it in my own example, the difficulties I have … the homophobe in me, a little internalized one is still working. (Bartek, past RT participant, 2016)

What is also important to acknowledge is the extent to which some of the participants of RT, having fallen for its promise, internalized its message to the point that the failure of the reorientation efforts became experienced as a personal one, leaving them with the sense that if only they had done something else, something more, it would have worked and they would in fact become straight; this point is also illustrated by Bartek: ‘Right now I see it [RT] differently, but it is still somewhere there inside of me. Something like this, this thinking that maybe if I did something more, I would be normal …’ (Bartek, past RT participant, 2016; emphasis added). This is of relevance in relation to the ways in which RT as a practice and an ideology colludes with individualizing neoliberal ideals of self-governance. What it also signals is how self-responsibilization and individualization cause real damage to people subjected to their logic. What people are left with is a sense of personal failure rather than a realization that what they were promised was close to, if not entirely, unachievable, whilst the structural inequality that the practice of RT rests upon goes unchallenged. This idea is reflected well in Pascha’s metaphorical use of K2 (Kilimanjaro 2). On Pascha’s website, we read that ‘each participant of Pascha is climbing his own personal K2 … the climb to the top is so hard that it often requires the highest of sacrifices’ (Pascha, 2018). Kamil's reflections on the use of K2 point to its paradoxical character:

Kamil: There is this K2 [metaphor] … so weird that K2 was employed to do this job [of representing Pascha's programme] … probably they were not aware of it, or they knew nothing about mountains, but it's one of the most inaccessible mountains in the world, specially in winter no one has ever climbed it.

Author: Maybe it was a conscious choice?

Kamil: Maybe … I would say the Holy Spirit was watching over it … the intentions were probably good, things [that are] not necessarily achievable and all, but K2 is something practically unattainable for most people, paradoxically. (Kamil, past RT participant, 2015)

As paradoxical as Kamil finds the comparison to K2, it can be argued that it perfectly conveys the logic of RT, shifting the burden of effectiveness from the structure onto the individual – for just as you would not blame a mountain for your inability to climb it, you cannot blame the group or the idea it is built on for your failure to achieve the goal of reorientation.

Women in RT

Robinson and Spivey (2007) argue that the ex-gay movement – of which RT is an important component – is not only anti-gay, but also inherently anti-feminist. Analysis of RT in Poland confirms that view. What is also relevant is how RT’s gender politics collude with the political rationality of neoliberalism that has been critiqued for its own gendered blind spot (McKim, 2008; Skeggs, 1997, 2004). From the three groups in question, only Odwaga used to run a support group for women and to the author’s best knowledge it no longer does so. In the narrative of RT groups in Poland, women figure only as secondary characters. They are defined by their relationship to men, as mothers or wives. This is reflected in the only two female testimonies on Odwaga’s website. The first one is an account of a mother, signed simply Matka ‘Mother’, whose son is undergoing RT with Odwaga; it is a narrative of initial shock and pain followed by cautious optimism for the future that will hopefully bring reorientation. The testimony ends with an acknowledgement of the value of the experience that Mother is going through. Interestingly, Mother’s testimony is followed by a similar account from a man, a father, whose account is signed ‘Henryk’. As minute as such a difference might appear, using a first name in the case of the man, but identifying the woman by her social role and relationship to the participant, is symbolic of the way that RT positions women as secondary. In the story of RT, the mothers and wives are thus more archetypes than actual people.

In the online testimonies written by men on RT groups’ websites, the figure of a mother is often constructed as either overprotective or otherwise dysfunctional, in particular if her male partner abandoned her or if he was absent from his son’s life. Thus, the mother is the indirect cause of her son's ‘condition’. This is well illustrated in Patryk’s testimony:

I realized that my father’s presence was missing from my childhood … He had no time for me, so he did not teach me how to fish, play football and do other manly things … I was clutching on to my mother, who unconsciously turned me into a woman, showed me how to wash clothes, cook and clean. At school I got on best with girls, for them I was probably one of their girlfriends. This female world filled up my life … The cause of your homosexual tendencies could be similar to mine. Your emotional development stopped at the time when you needed your father’s love and attention. (Patryk’s testimony, Pomoc 2002, 2016)

The picture that is constructed above is that of the traditional patriarchal order in which it is the woman who exclusively carries the burden of domestic labour. It is also a picture that denigrates the same, positioning it as not only unsuitable for men, but also directly threatening to their growth as heterosexuals. Whilst in Patryk’s account it is the father’s absence that ultimately causes homosexual tendencies, the mother’s role is complicit, simply by the virtue of her female presence. Homosexuality is understood as a deficit of masculinity, one that can be restored through RT and the undoing of all female influence.

The second figure, the wife, has two functions. Firstly, she becomes a goal, an evidence of success and a proof of the efficacy of RT. Secondly, she is expected to be selfless, forgiving, accepting and supportive of her husband on his journey towards heterosexuality. The point that women are seen as instrumental in reasserting one's heterosexuality became visible when one of the past participants of Odwaga recounted how he was directly encouraged by the people in charge of the group to get married. When he pointed out that he ‘did not feel it', he was advised to find a wife who ‘like Virgin Mary’ would sacrifice and accept everything (Tomasz, past RT participant, 2015). Indeed, in the second testimony by a woman on Odwaga’s website that selfless attitude that is expected of women is illustrated well:

Soon after we met Krzysztof told me about his problem [homosexual tendencies] … he said that he hopes God has prepared me for what I am about to hear … I consented to this relationship, even though it was hard … I have had some tough days, a lot of tears, because Krzysztof was in therapy and was going through a lot. One day for example he told me that he is unable to see me for now because he has an overload of femininity. I felt horrible then, but I knew that it takes time … That it is too much for him. That I have to let him be, when he needs it … I knew that we might break up, or that I would need to wait for 10 years for something to change … (Kamila’s testimony on Odwaga’s website, 2017)

Kamila ends her account by describing how happy she is in her marriage now and how even though her relationship began as a struggle, it was all worth it in the end. In her account she is the patient, understanding one, making no claims and no demands, and her needs are subordinated to the needs of Krzysztof. What this account points to is a tension, whereby notions of a self-made individual collude with the existing patriarchal order. Thus, even though RT is grounded in the ideas of an independent and individualized self, the ideal of femininity reproduced is based on ideas of self-sacrifice, selflessness and devotion, illuminating the gendered double standard of the practice. Hence, RT is ultimately a male-biased and male-orientated practice, an ideology that subordinates women’s needs. The overall message of RT groups in Poland is based on the assumption that men can exercise control over their lives, including their sexuality, replicating an idea of personhood that is consistent with the political rationality of neoliberalism.

Finally, based on the above demonstrated understanding of gender roles within RT, where women figure almost exclusively as the supportive characters of mothers or wives, it is unsurprising that the model of the family promoted is that of a patriarchal one, with the heterosexual couple and their strongly gendered division of labour at the centre. For some men, the desire to have a traditional family was in fact the motivating factor for joining or remaining in an RT group, as illustrated below:

I always knew I wanted to have a wife and children, a family, to build something and in a way I saw the group as a way to get this … now I think it was naïve and obviously not going to happen, but back then it made sense. Get better, fall in love [with a woman] start a family and you know, live happily ever after [laughs]. (Szymon, past RT participant, 2016)

In the beginning it was the lack of knowledge, I think … I thought it would all change … Or that my sexual orientation is still unformed … that I might actually be bisexual … Later however, not necessarily [that was guiding me], I wanted to have a family, etc., so I was more interested in issues of a social nature, I could not imagine a life of loneliness, and this [homosexual] orientation is generally linked to that. (Piotr, past RT participant, 2016)

Piotr’s account echoes points made earlier about the invisibility of the structural inequalities and homophobia, whereby homosexuality is first approached as a developmental phase and then linked explicitly to loneliness. Whilst Piotr, who self-identifies as bisexual, is now married and has children, Szymon has given up on his dream of having a family and what is relevant here is how they both understand family in terms of the heterosexual, nuclear version thereof. If we combine that with RT’s understanding of single-parent families – with its gendered aspect of female-headed households as dysfunctional and potentially leading to homosexual tendencies, the narrative that emerges is one that constructs the heterosexual, patriarchal family as the only valid site for child rearing, discounting any other configurations.

Consequently and to sum up, the gender politics of RT are strongly biased towards the male subject that is supposedly free to shape his own destiny. Whilst RT mobilizes individualizing and self-responsibilizing narratives, these rest on an unquestionably gendered double standard. Colluding with the patriarchal order of Catholic Christianity, but also with the neoliberal understanding of subjectivity, the world of RT is a male-centred and male-serving one.

Concluding remarks

This article has investigated RT as a practice of responsibilization and individualization, a technology of the self. By examining how RT requires its participants to self-scrutinize and self-manage both individually and in a group setting, the article has demonstrated how its promise and methods reproduce neoliberal notions of selfhood by reiterating the ideal of the self-made, agentic and in-control subject. The message of RT is a clear-cut one: it is all in your hands, you are the maker and sole owner of your success and, relatedly, if you fail you only have yourself to blame; the essential injustice of the practice is left intact. The neoliberal logic also echoes in terms of how RT is gendered and biased towards the male subject. Thus, the ability to engage in such entrepreneurial making and remaking of the self is reserved for men. This article argues that RT is a site that reproduces gendered stereotypes that position men as in charge of their destiny and sexuality, chiming with the critique of neoliberal ideas of the self as ultimately gendered. It is also on gender politics that RT colludes and is almost seamlessly incorporated into the locally prevalent patriarchal understanding of the role of women within the traditional model of family and by extension also in society at large, a male-centred and male-serving order, of which the Church has been the ceaseless guardian in Poland.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and thoughtful suggestions to improve this manuscript.

Notes

Magdalena Mikulak has a PhD in Gender Studies from the Department of Gender Studies at LSE, UK, where she is currently an associate. Her doctoral project examined the way that processes of neoliberalization impact upon the politics of sexuality in contemporary Poland. She teaches on the interdisciplinary LSE100 course. Her research interests include sexualities, neoliberalism, LGBTQ activisms, class, social change, social movements and Central and Eastern Europe. She tweets at @magmikulak.

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