Becoming Gay The Journey to Self-Acceptance

by ISAY, RICHARD

• ISBN13: 9780307389770
• ISBN10: 0307389774
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-05-05
• Publisher: Vintage

Summary

Now revised and updated for the 21st-century,Becoming Gayis the classic guide on how to accept one's homosexuality. By exploring the psychological development of gay men through personal case historiesincluding his ownDr. Isay shows how disguising one's sexual identity can induce anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Individual chapters tackle acceptance in any stage or circumstance of life, whether it be adolescence, married-with-children, retirement age, or living with HIV and AIDS. Dr. Isay's insights provide invaluable support to gay men and will enliven families, friends, and therapists who want to better understand the process of coming out and help their loved ones or patients to embrace a positive gay identity.

Author Biography

Dr. Richard Isay is a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic and a faculty member of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. He was instrumental in getting the American Psychoanalytic Association to adopt a non-discrimination policy for the training of candidates.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
Introduction: Being Homosexual and Becoming Gay	p. 3
Becoming Gay: A Personal Odyssey	p. 10
The Gay Therapist	p. 36
The Homosexual Adolescent	p. 62
The Dilemma of Heterosexually Married Homosexual Men	p. 84
Developing a Positive Gay Identity with HIV or AIDS	p. 114
Becoming Gay as an Older Homosexual Man	p. 132
Opposing Institutional Bias: Antigay Discrimination in Psychoanalysis	p. 147
Notes	p. 169
Index	p. 187
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

1- Becoming Gay: A Personal Odyssey

We seek other conditions because we know not how to enjoy our own; and to go outside of ourselves for want of knowing what it is like inside of us. —MONTAIGNE

In Yale’s psychiatry department during the 1960s, most of us studying to become psychiatrists believed that psychoanalysis was the optimal therapy for emotional disorders. The analyst, with his esoteric technique that included a couch, free association, and four or five sessions a week over at least that many years, appeared to have greater access to the hidden recesses of his own mind, as well as to the mind of others, than did the psychiatrist in his face-to-face, once- or twice-weekly therapy. Psychoanalysis also offered an all-encompassing theory of mental functioning and human development, and reading Freud was not only intellectually engaging but great fun. The majority of psychiatric residents at that time wanted to be analyzed; many of us hoped to become analysts.

I had wanted to be a psychoanalyst since my third year at Haverford College. In a course on nineteenth-century philosophy I had read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, whose views about irrational sources of human behavior and the unconscious mind intrigued me. Jung’s speculative thinking about myths, archetypes, and archetypal images provided a bridge between my interest in philosophy and a growing fascination with academic psychology. I had no idea that my burgeoning interest in the mind was due to distress and confusion over a longstanding attraction to other boys.

In my freshman year I had fallen in love with one of my classmates. I first saw Bob on the train returning to college from Thanksgiving vacation. He had a slender, well- proportioned, athletic body, dark hair, which he wore in a neat brush cut, soft but intelligent brown eyes, and a warm, engaging smile. I thought he was incredibly handsome. I admired how comfortable he was with our classmates and how much they, in turn, appeared to want him to like them. Although too shy to speak to him on the train, I noted his every move and developed a crush and the determination to get to know him. We lived near each other in the same dormitory, and with a studied nonchalance that belied my excitement I’d drop over to his room to chat. We gradually became friends and decided to live together the following year. I moved into the suite he was sharing with two roommates.

In my sophomore year a recent graduate of Harvard’s clinical psychology program had joined Haverford’s faculty to teach psychology. He was a demanding and dynamic teacher, interested in psychoanalytic theory and the contributions psychoanalysis had made to understanding human motivation and behavior. In his course on personality we read Freud’s views on homosexuality as a perversion, and I became convinced that I was sick. But from what I learned the next semester about adolescence in his course on human development, I comforted myself with the knowledge that some attraction to other boys was natural and that my infatuation with Bob was a passing phase that would soon be replaced by an equally passionate interest in girls.

Since I was never attracted to girls, I dated infrequently. My evenings and weekends were spent studying, often simply to avoid the appearance of having time on my hands. My roommates were all diligent students. Bob was pre-med and worked hard, although his considerable academic achievements often appeared effortless. Another roommate, Jack, was the college German scholar, who immersed himself in German literature in addition to his premedical studies. Their dedication to academic pursuits, along with my own, usually made it unnecessary for me to date except on rare occasions such as the annual college dance, when I felt social pressure to do so.

I looked forward to the time that Bob and I spent alone and was jealous when he was with other frie

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Excerpted from Becoming Gay: The Journey to Self-Acceptance by Richard Isay
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