Look at the outside of this man
Look at his physical appearance
Look into this man's heart
Look into his soul
Now look more deeply...
I feel this emptiness inside me every time I look into the mirror
The impulse I want to do is just punch that mirror because I can see
my fucking parents in the background
Just staring at me and doing nothing
as I've gone through this my entire fucking life
and I want to scream 'What the fuck is your problem!?'
'Where were you?!'
'Why did you leave me here?!'
Conversion Therapy is a set of dangerous and totally discredited practices
That attempt to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of a person
They're often practiced by licensed mental health profesionals
also sometimes unlicensed counselors, religious leaders
Sometimes just in church basements
and they most often target kids under 18
and these people give them what they claim is the solution.
What it actually does is it supports an industry
that is profiting off of the harm and, sometimes, the death of kids.
And to one degree or another,
conversion therapy is happening in every state in the country.
What is your greatest fear this weekend?
Of letting people down, and myself
What is your greatest fear this weekend?
My greatest fear just not being present and not being here doing what God wants me to do
What is your greatest fear this weekend?
My greatest fear is that I will leave without having touched someone else's life
What is your greatest fear this weekend?
My greatest fear this weekend is letting you down
Thank you. See the next man
Everyone is heterosexual
the idea that some people are naturally homosexual or naturally gay is just a
social construct
so when you have an individual who has same-sex attraction we see it as
something went wrong developmentally and we try to resolve the issue and put them
them back on the path toward their natural heterosexuality
that's the philosophy of it. My name is Joseph Nicolosi, I'm a clinical
psychologist. A licensed clinical psychologist and I'm the founder of
reparative therapy. The concepts and principles of reparative therapy
they're something I have developed over 30 years and four books and many many articles
Journey Into Manhood came into existence based upon the reparative therapy model.
So the basic principles of reparative therapy were taken and turned into a weekend experience.
We're doing a 32 man circle so that we have the appropriate sized space
to work with for our rehearsals. So we need more here, we got six we need eight
Our organization People Can Change is there for the man who voluntarily wants
to experience some diminishment in his unwanted same-sex attraction and Journey
Into Manhood is a weekend program that we offered to help build that
understanding and that opportunity for, for men who want to choose that path we
have no interest in telling people who are happy being gay that they should
change or that there's anything wrong with them or whatever that's not our
mission that's not what we believe but we do believe that men who are
uncomfortable with their homosexuality should have opportunities to understand
it and try to diminish it to the extent that that's possible for them.
Okay, now this is a rehearsal. Now we're going to start off working through the
kinks of the process itself.
Thank you so much men for you're willing to serve. I'd like all of you to put your
hands in your lap.
Put your feet flat on the floor.
Feel the power of the Earth
coming up into your body. Close your eyes. Take a moment to breathe.
Breath in your nose and out your mouth.
Yeah the staff wear a pouch of magic seeds so it represents Jack's, the
seeds that were planted in the, Jack story, Jack and the Beanstalk and
the potential for creativity and growth and empowerment that the seeds represent.
So once the Journey-ers
go through the weekend, they receive this as a token of their experience and
interestingly, as an aside, in the Jack and the Giant Slayer movie
I was pleased to see that Jack carries his magic seeds around his neck in a
little pouch which was 10 years or more after we started doing it
it's interesting.
Music queue. Good. Stop. Go back to the beginning
Music queue. Perfect! Okay go.
The story of Jack and the Amazing Bean Stalk
(cheering and clapping)
We use a fairy tale, a myth, the Jack and the Bean Stalk story as a kind of a
metaphor for every boys growth into manhood.
I'll give you these seeds
We borrowed some of the interpretation of it from Michael
Gurian's book The Wonder of Boys
he talks about and uses it as a model of how this boy Jack is estranged
from his mother a little bit as he goes off and experiences his masculinity
Look at it: a phallic symbol.
So, the beanstalk is a big penis?
He is challenged and faces... -Biggest, baddest, meanest
-...a giant in which represents his shadow
and that he finds gold which represents the gold in him
Mythisists call this a hero's journey
so every boys growth into manhood in some ways is a hero's journey as he
battles the shadows and embraces his gold
-Next is basically the shadow B9 shadow guy -Some of the staff we
break them into specific roles to help to bring out the different aspects of a man
roles that help men sort of look in the mirror at their own life and understand
themselves in a relationship to the world
of masculinity.
Ok so see yourself as Jack. Go ahead and start. See yourself as Jack running from
giants. Running from the shadow. Imagining pushing through the wall through your wall of
fear and shame. -So I did my first Journey Into Manhood
weekend back in 2007. It's probably the most impactful weekend I've
ever went on in my entire life.
I was never what our society calls gay or homosexual or whatever we label we
put on it
I am simply a man anything I would always considered myself a heterosexual
man was just with a lot of issues.
Let's start with Jeddy since he knows this process so you guys watch watch
Jeddy as he models us.
You want me to do it like I'm gonna do it? -Uh huh. Okay.
I feel anger and I feel this emptiness inside me every time I look into the mirror the
the impulse I want to do is just punch that here because I can see my fucking
parents in the background just staring at me and doing nothing
as I've gone through this my entire fucking life.
And I want to scream 'What the fuck is your problem?!' 'Where were you?!'
'Why did you leave me here?!'
The goal of the weekend Journey Into Manhood is to find where
on that Journey a step was taken off. So that you can find your way back on to it
I felt so empty when I tried to live the lifestyle
it didn't feel right I wanted to be a husband. I wanted to be a father and I
wanted to be true to that and I wanted to be true to God.
For me personally what was missing was a father figure.
-Someone's gonna be standing out there like someone's gonna be standing out
there and then it as soon as we get big enough groups
the camp will take them up here. -Really, and who you've got this all set up
-Yeah. Beautiful, thank you. -Rich actually staffed my weekend and that was my first
time meeting him and I looked up to him very much because he started this
organization that's helped over 2,000 men and I hold him very highly in my
mind. I have a fear that I'm not going to become like him somebody and
that's my goal.
You know it's, it's the same thing as when I see a father
You know I want to be a father someday so badly and I fear that that's not
going to happen
it's the same type of thing.
-Like as if your body was a sandbag and the stresses are like sand blowing out
your fingers and your toes
allow yourself to see this and to feel.
-31 years ago I almost killed myself over my same-sex attractions.
So everything that happened in my life prior to that; sexual abuse, physical
abuse, being bullied half to death living in fear every day of my life.
I realized what I was facing, I put a name to it and I'm probably queer and homo
You really are a queer, you really are a homo but I made the
decision than that that wasn't how I wanted to live
I wanted a wife, I wanted kids, I wanted that I wanted a normal life and I set
out to go make it happen.
One of the things we deal with a lot here is individual trauma that may have
existed from bullying, to more overt acts of sexual molestation or that kinds
of thing.
There's certainly have a higher percentage of men dealing with unwanted
same-sex attraction who have been sexually molested
that's that seems clear. -Today I have a job I love,
I have people I love that I work with, I have a church I love
I just love every minute of life and I feel free, completely free to be the man
that I want to be and the man that I believe God created me to be.
There are many associated features of living a gay identity that is
problematic. -See the tender age at which homosexuals prefer their
conquests
lesbians, sadists, masochists, and other sex deviants
First of all we go back to the fundamentals
we are physically anatomically designed for the opposite sex
when you look at gay sex, very simply the parts don't fit. Their relationships are
more short-term, there's more depression, there's more anxiety
there's more self defeating, self-destructive behaviors, alcohol abuse.
Gay men smoke cigarettes more than straight men as a small example.
There's a segment of the
the gay world that is very much into one night stands and you know
anonymous hookups and that kind of thing and that's easy to to find and easy to
fall into. -Group sex, anonymous sex
Pretty soon they've got, you know, a new partner, then this partner, then that partner
that they've had a hundred then they've had two hundred and that's typical of the gay community.
Many people
who experiment
in the gay world say 'I don't want this. I want one wife, picket fence, 2.5 kids,
period. And that's their right.
So you're a married man. -Yes. Do you have children? -Yeah I have one son. And um is he
heterosexual? -Can you imagine, no of course he's heterosexual. He's married
he's a psychologist and he actually works at this clinic.
What would you said if he came to you and told you that he... -I would have said, 'What did I do wrong?'