Psychologists' responsibility

I write to express my utter disgust at the opinion expressed by Rev. Dr Victor Shields during last Friday week's edition of Xarabank.

As a clinical psychologist, I would like to completely disassociate myself from Dr Shields.

Mr Bernard Caruana, on the other hand, explained very clearly what the trend in psychology is today. I would like to add that, as psychologists, we carry a responsibility to respect and celebrate people's differences, and an obligation to help all people discover their true selves and move towards integrating all parts of their personality.

If we can't do this, then we are not practising our profession ethically.

Furthermore, Dr Shields also carries a further responsibility as a priest. He calls homosexuality an "aberration", and he then goes on to say that he opposes discrimination against homosexuals.

Does he not realise the power his word carries as a priest in Malta? Does he not realise the message he is giving to the very people he is supposed to be educating and teaching to "love one another as I have loved you"?

Once we have labelled a group of people "aberrations", is it not likely that the next step will be to treat them as such? Does this then not amount to discrimination?