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

Mikulak, Magdalena (2020) Telling a poor man he can become rich : Reparative therapy in contemporary Poland. Sexualities, 23 (1-2). pp. 44-63. ISSN 1363-4607

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.