I’ve often heard it suggested that sometimes our adult sexual desires result from experiences much earlier in life. Such theories are always a tad complicated since sometimes rather than something happening to reinforce a specific desire later in adulthood some therapists try to argue that it is a lack of something in youth that has caused an “aberrant” need or behavior as an adult.

For example, you could enjoy sexual gratification from spanking and punishment as an adult because that was how you felt loved or appreciated by important people when you were young. Conversely, if your caregivers were strict in theory but seldom in practice, a lack of physical discipline might cause you to crave it as an adult.

Everyone I suppose is entitled to an opinion but periodically one has to giggle at what supposedly passes for therapy. From an online Christian news source, called Agape Press, I just read a story about a prominent therapist from the controversial field of sexual reorientation. One of those infamous “ex-gays” that believes that homosexuality is a choice that can be changed with treatment.

Christian psychotherapist Richard Cohen is the board president of the ex-homosexual education and outreach organization known as Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX). He has been criticized by fellow therapists within the same field who practice other forms of “reparative” therapy for his unorthodox approach.

During a May 23 appearance on the Cable News Network (CNN), the good doctor demonstrated what he called a “healthy touch” technique where he cuddles his male clients as well as female ones in his lap as a means of overcoming a “touch deprived” past in the patient’s early development.

“So what we have to provide then, in the Christian community, is really mentoring these men and women,” he says, “and a lot of them need healthy touch — hugging, holding, just palling around, buddying around.”

The story doesn’t really confirm whether Dr. Cohen’s feel good therapy has cured many of his patients. Nevertheless, I’m sure the regular bouts of roughhousing with his male patients and then caressing them on his lap has helped keep this ex-gay doctor on the straight and narrow way.

Now, if I call myself “doctor” and charge you $500/hour for “remedial bonding through discipline” will you let me smack your bottom hard in regualr weekly sessions designed to make up for the lack we both had of proper spankings when we were young? After all, helping people makes me feel so good.