JONAH

Domain XVI · Historical, discredited & harmful · Arthur Goldberg · 1998 · Jersey City, New Jersey

What it is

This guide is listed for history and safety. JONAH was a conversion practice, not a therapy to be used: it is described here so that a psychotherapist can recognise it and its descendants, work with people who went through it or are drawn to it, and act on safeguarding and reporting duties. Nothing…

Format

• The framework below describes the phases of the psychotherapist's own work, built from the professional statements cited and marked where it goes beyond them. Session number and length follow the client's needs and the setting.
• Phase A: recognition and assessment. Goal: learn whether the client went through JONAH, a successor or a similar programme (religious, peer-led, coaching, residential, online), what was done in outline, and the current effects. Includes suicide-risk screening at first contact. Move on when risk is…

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• Historical phases of the practice, in outline. Founding by two Jewish families in New Jersey (1998, per the New Jersey Jewish News); a programme the same paper describes as running for years, with individual and group sessions led by a non-licensed "life coach"; a civil suit filed in 2012 with the SPLC as plaintiffs' counsel; a February 2015 pre-trial ruling by Judge Peter F. Bariso Jr. excluding defence experts…

Evidence status, as the guide reports it

• The current professional position is that such efforts do not change sexual orientation or gender identity and are associated with harm: the APA's 2021 resolution reports research since 2009 showing "no evidence of sexual orientation change" and that former participants describe the experience as…

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Is there physical contact? Was it explained beforehand, and do you feel free to say no or stop at any point?
• Does it involve any substance, plant preparation, remedy or supplement? Has your doctor or prescriber been told, especially about any medication you take?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• How do you and the practitioner understand what is happening, in spiritual or cultural terms? Is that a source of comfort, worry, or both?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• overwhelm and dissociation (slow down, ground). Working: a shared map of effects that the client recognises.
• pressure from the spouse or community to resume change efforts; risk at disclosure. Working: decisions the client owns.
• the client swinging to blaming themselves for having joined. Working: compassion for self and a more nuanced view of family.
• subtle steering in either direction. Working: the client experiences the therapist as neutral on outcome and warm in stance.
• a parent or spouse seeking reports; a client unable to state any goal of their own. Working: the client states their own aims.

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.