Elizabeth Moberly

Elizabeth Rosamund Moberly (born 18 September 1949 in Whyteleafe, Surrey) She is the author of Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic, in which she suggests several possible causes of male homosexuality and a therapeutic cure. Despite her writings in psychology and psychiatry, and despite her influence on the controversial practice of "conversion therapy" for LGBTQ+ people, Moberly has solely had training in theology and her theories are not based on clinical research. Her theories have been universally discredited by professionals in the medical, psychiatric, and psychological fields.

Background There is limited public record about Elizabeth Moberly, especially regarding her educational background. An article by Basil Zion in St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly profiling her in 1988 described Moberly as an "Anglo-Dutch member of the Orthodox Church and the third member of the Moberly family to write on the theme of the atonement". and his son, Sir Walter Hamilton Moberly, who wrote the essay "The Atonement" 11 years later. Sir Walter Moberly also wrote The Ethics of Punishment (1968), the arguments in which Elizabeth Moberly later built upon in her doctoral thesis "Suffering, Innocent and Guilty".

Elizabeth Moberly is also recorded in the register of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford as one of its students between 1968 and 1972. The entry states that she had attended Croydon High School before matriculating as a scholar at Oxford, where she went on to achieve First-class grade in Classical Moderations and Second-class in Theology. She earned an MA as well as a DPhil from Oxford.

Some sources have reported that Moberly also holds an unspecified degree from the University of Cambridge.

Career

Moberly completed her doctorate in Theology under the supervision of the Rev Dr John Macquarrie. Her thesis was later published by SPCK in 1978 as a monograph entitled Suffering, Innocent and Guilty. In 1982, the journal Salmagundi noted that "Moberly teaches at Lucy Cavendish" in its contributors' biography section, without specifying which subject it was that she taught. She was reportedly a Leverhulme Fellow between 1981 and 1983. Moberly's training and credibility in the field of psychology, or lack thereof, have been called into question.

In the late 1970s, Moberly became inspired by the works of Charles W. Socarides, an American psychiatrist who opposed the removal of homosexuality as a disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Also published in 1983 was her third book, "Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic". A review of both books in the journal Psychological Medicine described Moberly's arguments as "well-meaning but unconvincing". Criticising Moberly's lack of evidence and over-reliance on psychoanalysis, a reviewer in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry mockingly described the book as an example of "the art of using the minimum of words to say nothing". A review of "Psychogenesis" in particular, published in the Medico-Legal Society's Journal in 1983, described the book as "full of assertions, generalisations, paradoxes and speculations, unsupported by clinical or statistical observations". A later review of the same book in 1986, published in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, questioned the strength of Moberly's evidence, pointing to the lack of details on any patients or subjects involved in here research, unconvinced that a mere review of previous writings was adequate to state the case with such "unshakable conviction". Similarly, "Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic" was criticised in the journal Medicine, Science and the Law for its lack of "case histories or statistical figures of therapeutic success" being reported.

Despite criticisms of her publications, Moberly went on to speak at several high profile academic conferences in the UK and abroad following the release of her books. In 1984, she was a speaker at the annual conference of the Society for the Study of Theology, her paper entitled, "Personal meaning and theological truth". In 1985, she gave a guest lecture titled "New Perspectives on Homosexuality" to the Royal Society of Health. The same year also saw the publication of The Psychology of the self and others, a sequel to Psychogenesis, as well as Moberly's invitation to speak at the Psychoanalytic Self Psychology Conference in New York. Her paper from the conference, "The Psychogenesis of Gender Identity", was published the following year in Bulletin of the British Association of Psychotherapists, accompanied by a disclaimer of the controversial nature of the speaker's views. In the late 1980s, Moberly was a guest lecturer at Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York, where she made claims of high success rate in curing men of homosexuality through "reparative therapy". While some audience members were sympathetic, not all were convinced by her claims. An article in the Syracuse Herald-Journal in 1993 noted Moberly's profession as a "teacher and author", and that she had been on talk shows such as The 700 Club, hosted at the time by the conservative Christian presenter Pat Robertson. At some point, she was involved in ministry to homosexuals as Director of Psychosexual Education and Therapy for Bible-Centered Ministries (BCM International), based in Philadelphia.

Influences on conversion therapy Moberly's work has continued to be influential in the controversial practice of conversion therapy. Her work inspired that of A. Dean Byrd and Joseph Nicolosi, even as the latter gained more prominence and popularity compared to hers later on. In 2010, an undercover investigation into conversion therapy in the UK by The Independent noted that her work was referenced by a conversion therapist, specifically her theory about "the cannibalistic nature of homosexual sex". Moberly's influence in conversion therapy was referenced again in the GMC's investigation into another practitioner, as reported by The Guardian in 2011. As argued by historian Chris Babits, the legacy of the work of Moberly and her contemporaries in conversion therapy is "profound and lasting psychological harm" to the people who have been subject to this so called "therapy".