by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

When the client opens up his emotional life to the therapist, he has engaged in an act of trust which links him to the therapist in an elegant, intimate “dance.” The central healing process of psychotherapy is this experience of attunement.

One very important lesson the client learns in psychotherapy is the vital art of simultaneous feeling-describing. Typically, he has “disowned” aspects of his interior emotional life.Therefore, making that connection between feeling-describing in the presence of another person is almost always distressing to him.

When parents have failed to accurately mirror the small child’s internal experience, and failed to model the lesson that feeling and expressing his feelings is safe, the child will become emotionally disorganized and emotionally isolated. He grows up learning to distrust his own interior perceptions, and becomes prone to shame-infused shutdowns of emotional relations.

The child’s defenses will cause him to shift his attention back and forth from content to feelings, and then back again to content, but avoiding making the link between the two.

At critical moments of strong emotion, I often need to encourage the client, “Try to stay in contact with me and with your feelings at the same time.” Establishing this neural link between thinking and feeling initiates the vital process of unification between left-brain and right brain-hemispheres, between cognitive and affective, between conscious and unconscious, through the medium of human interaction.

Misunderstandings, hurt feelings and hidden resentments are inevitable in the therapeutic relationship. They offer the client an opportunity to learn how to reengage emotionally after a relational breach. Negotiating his way through such an experience shows the client how relationships can survive the critical process of “attunement–misattunement—reattunement” and reveals how relational trust, when lost, can in fact be regained.

Reattunement moments link the client back to the therapist, and also back to himself. Through this process, he gradually increases his capacity to tolerate distress in human relationships. At its best, this emotional reconnection is reminiscent of the earliest, most primal attunement between mother and child.

One never actually “undo” a trauma of the past, of course.Yet a good therapeutic relationship can lay down new, positive neurological pathways on top of the old, traumatic experiences.For too long, these traumas have prevented the person from engaging others through the full sense of personhood that he now longs to claim.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

Over the years, many men have come to my office for help in changing their sexual orientation. Homosexuality doesn’t work in their lives. It just never feels right or true. To these men, it is clear that gay relationships don’t reflect who they are as gendered beings, and that they have been designed–physically and emotionally–for opposite-sex coupling.

But reorientation therapy is a long and difficult process, with no guarantee of success. What if the man doesn’t change? Will he have gained anything of value?

People are often surprised to hear that in Reparative Therapy®, typically there is very little discussion about sex. In fact, it is a mistake for any psychotherapy to focus exclusively on one particular symptom. Clients come in with a difficulty that they want removed from their life–an eating disorder, gambling obsession, or unwanted same-sex attraction– but good therapy addresses the whole person.

I typically tell my clients in the very first session, “Rule Number One is, never accept anything I say unless it resonates as true for you.” The experience of the client, whatever that may be, must always trump any preconceived theory. Reparative theory holds that the origin of SSA is in unmet emotional and identification needs with the same sex, and the client is free to accept or reject that premise. If that doesn’t feel true to him, he will usually decide to leave therapy after one or two sessions.

Through a relationship with an attuned therapist, the client discovers how it feels to emotionally disclose to another man–revealing those long-buried, shame-evoking feelings. He experiences from him a deep acceptance of wherever he is in his life, at that point in time, whether he changes or not. Such an experience is always deeply therapeutic.

Besides an enhanced ability to develop genuine male friendships, the client will discover healthier relationships with females– where he learns to prohibit the boundary violations with women that may have caused him to surrender his separate, masculine selfhood.

But what about the client who fails to change; will he be left in a sort of “intimacy limbo” — not heterosexual, yet unable to be intimate with men? The truth is, our client was never intimate with men. That is why he came to therapy. He also came to us because he believes that true sexual intimacy with a person of the same gender is, in fact, not possible: same-sex eroticism simply fails to match his biological and emotional design, and does not reflect who he is on the deepest level.

Other men enter Reparative Therapy® as gay-identified from the start. With those clients, we agree on a precondition to our working together–that is, we will not address the issue of sexual-identity change, but we will work on all of their other problems in living. And so we work on issues like capacity for intimacy, problems with self-esteem, internalized shame, childhood trauma, and the search for identity.

Some of our clients decide to change course and embrace homosexuality as “who they are.” Others never lose their conviction that they were designed to be heterosexual, and they persist toward that goal. Still others remain ambivalent about change, while going in and out of gay life over a period of months. We accept their choices even if we don’t agree with them, because we accept the person.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

In recent years, I have been gratified to see an increasing number of graduate students interested in working with same-sex attracted (SSA) clients who seek change. Some of these young students struggled with this issue in their own personal lives, and now, they want to take the lessons they learned to help others.

“But is this work worth the price?” they ask.

In reply, I’d like to describe both the positives and the negatives.

The Negatives

People who cannot handle controversy “need not apply.” You’ll quickly learn to refrain from telling the friendly passenger sitting next to you on a plane, what you really do for a living. (You may well discover that this newfound acquaintance is not as open-minded as he seemed at first.) Ditto for cocktail parties. Some people will laud you as a modern-day hero, while others will intolerantly accuse you of intolerance–quite oblivious to that inherent contradiction. Prepare yourself to be misunderstood.

If you use the term “Reparative Therapy®” to describe your approach, know that it’s both a blessing and a curse. Taken literally, it may sound insulting (as in the idea of “repairing” someone, as you would fix a car). Yet that’s not what the term really means. “Reparative” refers to the concept of homosexuality as a reparative drive, which is actually good news to for the client suffering with unwanted SSA. Many men were led to believe that their SSA reveals them to be “weird,” “perverted,” and “degenerate.” But now, through the concept of reparative drive, they realize that their felt needs are a normal and healthy (although developmentally delayed) attempt to gain the gender bonding that they failed to get in childhood. Grasping the reparative-drive concept diminishes the client’s shame and self-loathing, and it also lays out a positive blueprint for change; namely, through the acquisition of nonsexual masculine intimacy. All this requires considerable explanation, but to very many clients, it gradually begins to ring true as the story that explains their lives.

The client quickly discovers that the reparative therapist offers him a more profound acceptance than he has found in the gay community, where the # 1 taboo says, “Never ask why you’re gay.” (See my interview on the NARTH website with former gay activist Michael Glatze.). In contrast, in Reparative Therapy®, the client is encouraged to openly investigate the emotional and bonding deficits of his childhood.

Another disadvantage…you’ll be repeatedly frustrated to see the popular media misrepresent you and quote you out of context. Be prepared to be betrayed by that nice LA Times staff writer who calls your home, gets a half-hour of great quotes, and only uses one sentence–out of context…the very one that mischaracterizes you. Some time later, you may be absolutely convinced by the friendly Washington Post reporter that she, unlike the other reporters, really does want a fair and balanced story, so you bite the bait–believing that fairness will ultimately prevail. But then when the article comes out, you are outraged once again.

Here’s another paradox: Expect that quite a few therapist-colleagues will privately encourage you and reassure you, “You’re doing a great job.” They admire your work and say they are on your side. But, they admit, “I could never say this publicly– it would be too destructive to my career.”

Possibly the most difficult negative is this: Expect to work sincerely with a hurting teenager who’s exploring his sexual-identity options, who sincerely believes that humanity is designed for heterosexuality, and who does very well during the months he’s with you. Then five years later, you find out that he’s been elected president of his college’s Gay and Lesbian Club–and, to your dismay, he now has a video on YouTube that trashes you and your work.

It’s not unusual for young people who are questioning their sexuality to go back-and-forth one or two times before they settle on their sexual identity. The young client with whom you have a close and understanding relationship today, may very well find comfort and support with a newfound group of gay-activist friends, and then decide to publicly reject you and your ideas.

The Positives

If you have not been discouraged by now, read on. The benefits do far outweigh the costs. You have the privilege of investigating and developing a new area of treatment that flies in the face of what the APA–under their current stranglehold of enforced silence about the origins of homosexuality–is trying to accomplish in this area. There’s a counter-cultural satisfaction in achieving success in a field where political correctness reigns. (This satisfaction far outweighs the numbing outrage you feel each time you hear about another episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show.)

But most of all, you have the privilege of working in the most intimate way with idealistic men who are determined not to follow their unwanted feelings, but to fulfill their dream of a traditional marriage and family.

There is great satisfaction is seeing a man come into your consulting room for the first time after having lived a life of private torture; for years, he has struggled against his unwanted SSA, having no clue as to why it torments him so, or what he can do to help himself. As a victim of political correctness in the culture war, he was never offered another perspective about the origins of his SSA. His coming to you is the last step in the road, and in 45 minutes, he “knows that you know,” and he begins to assemble all the little fragments of his life–the hurts, the confusion, the shame, the distractions, the pain, the alienation, the loneliness–and after he presents all these fragments, you, as his therapist, can step into the middle of all of it and help him sort it all out in a way that suddenly makes really profound sense, and has life-transforming effect. For the therapist, this work requires a level of self-giving and exquisite attunement that leaves us exhausted, yet paradoxically exhilarated, at the end of the day.

A powerful fringe benefit, at times when you feel discouraged and begin to believe that the debate will never be won, is receiving a letter in the mail with a picture enclosed of a bride and groom. The note inside says “thank you” from a man you worked with many years ago. Or, when you get a letter from a man who expresses his profound appreciation that you helped him save his decades-long marriage–after another psychologist had told him he was born homosexual and would only find peace if he left his wife and children to begin life anew with another man. In my desk drawer, I keep a collection of such letters and pictures to remind myself what the work is all about.

Indeed, we have the privilege of walking with many such clients to Hell and back.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

It is widely agreed that many factors likely contribute to the formation of male homosexuality. One factor may be the predisposing biological influence of temperament (Byne and Parsons, l993). No scientific evidence, however, shows homosexuality to be directly inherited in the sense that eye color is inherited (Satinover, 1996).

Recent political pressure has resulted in a denial of the importance of the factor most strongly implicated by decades of previous clinical research–developmental factors, particularly the influence of parents. A review of the literature on male homosexuality reveals extensive reference to the prehomosexual boy’s relational problems with both parents (West 1959, Socarides 1978, Evans 1969); among some researchers, the father-son relationship has been particularly implicated (Bieber et al 1962, Moberly 1983).

One psychoanalytic hypothesis for the connection between poor early father-son relationship and homosexuality is that during the critical gender-identity phase of development, the boy perceives the father as rejecting. As a result, he grows up failing to fully identify with his father and the masculinity he represents.

Nonmasculine or feminine behavior in boyhood has been repeatedly shown to be correlated with later homosexuality (Green, l987, Zuger, l988); taken together with related factors–particularly the often-reported alienation from same-sex peers and poor relationship with father–this suggests a failure to fully gender-identify. In its more extreme form, this same syndrome (usually resulting in homosexuality) is diagnosed as Childhood Gender-Identity Deficit (Zucker and Bradley, 1996).

One likely cause for “failure to identify” is a narcissistic injury inflicted by the father onto the son (who is usually temperamentally sensitive) during the preoedipal stage of the boy’s development. This hurt appears to have been inflicted during the critical gender-identity phase when the boy must undertake the task of assuming a masculine identification. The hurt manifests itself as a defensive detachment from masculinity in the self, and in others. As an adult, the homosexual is often characterized by this complex which takes the form of “the hurt little boy” (Nicolosi, 1991).

During the course of my treatment of ego-dystonic male homosexuals, I have sometimes requested that fathers participate in their sons’ treatment. Thus I have been able to familiarize myself with some of the fathers’ most common personality traits. This discussion attempts to identify some clinical features common to those fathers of homosexuals.

For this report, I have focused on sixteen fathers who I consider typical in my practice–twelve fathers of homosexual sons (mid-teens to early 30’s), and four fathers of young, gender-disturbed, evidently prehomosexual boys (4- to 7- year-olds). The vast majority of these fathers appeared to be psychologically normal and, also like most fathers, well-intentioned with regard to their sons; in only one case was the father seriously disturbed, inflicting significant emotional cruelty upon his son.

However as a group, these fathers were characterized by the inability to counter their sons’ defensive detachment from them. They felt helpless to attract the boy into their own masculine sphere.

Clinical Impressions

As a whole, these fathers could be characterized as emotionally avoidant. Exploration of their histories revealed that they had typically had poor relationships with their own fathers. They tended to defer to their wives in emotional matters and appeared particularly dependent on them to be their guides, interpreters and spokespersons.

While these men expressed sincere hope that their sons would transition to heterosexuality, nevertheless they proved incapable of living up to a long-term commitment to help them toward that goal. In his first conjoint session, one father cried openly as his 15-year-old son expressed his deep disappointment with him; yet for months afterward, he would drive his son to his appointment without saying a word to him in the car.

Further, while they often appeared to be gregarious and popular, these fathers tended not to have significant male friendships. The extent to which they lacked the ability for male emotional encounter was too consistent and pronounced to be dismissed as simply “typical of the American male.” Rather, my clinical impression of these fathers as a group was that there existed some significant limitation in their ability to engage emotionally with males.

From their sons’ earliest years, these fathers showed a considerable variation in their ability to recognize and respond to the boys’ emotional withdrawal from them. Some naively reported their perception of having had a “great” relationship with their sons, while their sons themselves described the relationship as having been “terrible.” Approximately half the fathers, however, sadly admitted that the relationship was always poor and, in retrospect, perceived their sons as rejecting them from early childhood. Why their sons rejected them remained for most fathers a mystery, and they could only express a helpless sense of resignation and confusion. When pushed, these men would go further to express hurt and deep sadness. Ironically, these sentiments–helplessness, hurt and confusion–seemed to be mutual; they are the same expressed by my clients in describing their own feelings in the relationship with their fathers.

The trait common to fathers of homosexuals seemed to be an incapacity to summon the ability to correct relational problems with their sons. All the men reported feeling “stuck” and helpless in the face of their sons’ indifference or explicit rejection of them. Rather than actively extending themselves, they seemed characteristically inclined to retreat, avoid and feel hurt. Preoccupied with self-protection and unwilling to risk the vulnerability required to give to their sons, they were unable to close the emotional breach. Some showed narcissistic personality features. Some fathers were severe and capable of harsh criticism; some were brittle and rigid; overall, most were soft, weak and placid, with a characteristic emotional inadequacy. The term that comes to mind is the classic psycholanalytic term “acquiescent” – the acquiescent father.

Homosexuality is almost certainly due to multiple factors and cannot be reduced soley to a faulty father-son relationship. Fathers of homosexual sons are usually also fathers of heterosexual sons–so the personality of the father is clearly not the sole cause of homosexuality. Other factors I have seen in the development of homosexuality include a hostile, feared older brother; a mother who is a very warm and attractive personality and proves more appealing to the boy than an emotionally removed father; a mother who is actively disdainful of masculinity; childhood seduction by another male; peer labelling of the boy due to poor athletic ability or timidity; in recent years, cultural factors encouraging a confused and uncertain youngster into an embracing gay community; and in the boy himself, a particularly sensitive, relatively fragile, often passive disposition.

At the same time, we cannot ignore the striking commonality of these fathers’ personalities.

In two cases, the fathers were very involved and deeply committed to the treatment of their sons, but conceded that they were not emotionally present during their sons’ early years. In both cases it was not personality, but circumstance that caused the fathers’ emotional distance. In one case the father was a surgeon from New Jersey who reported atteding medical school while trying to provide financial support for his young family of three children. The second father, an auto mechanic from Arizona, reported that when he was only 21 years old, he was forced to marry the boy’s mother because she was pregnant. He admitted never loving the boy’s mother, having been physically absent from the home, and essentially having abandoned both mother and boy. Both fathers, now more mature and committed to re-establishing contact with their sons, participated enthusiastically in their therapy. But in both cases, the sons had, by then, become resistant to establishing an emotional connection with their fathers.

Attempt at Therapeutic Dialogue

My overall impression of fathers in conjoint sessions was of a sense of helplessness, discomfort and awkwardness when required to directly interact with their sons.

These men tended not to trust psychological concepts and communication techniques and often seemed confused and easily overwhelmed with the challenge to dialogue in depth. Instructions which I offered during consultation, when followed, were followed literally, mechanically and without spontaneity. A mutual antipathy, a stubborn resistance and a deep grievance on the part of both fathers and sons was clearly observable. At times I felt myself placed in the position of “mother interpreter,” a role encouraged by fathers and at times by sons. As “mother interpreter,” I found myself inferring feeling and intent from the father’s fragmented phrases and conveying that fuller meaning to the son, and vice versa from son to father.

Some fathers expressed concern with “saying the wrong thing,” while others seemed paralyzed by fear. During dialogue, fathers demonstrated great difficulty in getting past their own self-consciousness and their own reactions to what their sons were saying. This limited their empathetic attunement to the therapeutic situation, and to their sons’ position and feelings.

As their sons spoke to them, these fathers seemed blocked and unable to respond. Often they could only respond by saying that they were “too confused,” “too hurt,” or “too frustrated” to dialogue. One father said he was “too angry” to attend the sessions of his teenage son–a message conveyed to me by the mother. At the slightest sign of improvement in the father-son relationship, a few fathers seemed too ready to flee, concluding “Everything is okay – can I go now?”

Treatment Interventions

Before conjoint father-son sessions begin, the client should be helped to gain a clear sense of what he wants from his father. To simply expose the father to a list of complaints is of no value. He should also decide on a clear, constructive way to ask for this. Such preparation shifts the son from a position of helpless complaining, to staying centered on his genuine needs and the effective expression of them.

The Deadly Dilemma

Eventually, within the course of conjoint sessions a particular point will be reached which I call “the deadly dilemma.” This deadlock in dialogue–which seems to duplicate the earliest father-son rupture–occurs in two phases as follows:

Phase 1: With the therapist’s assistance, the son expresses his needs and wants to his father. Hearing his son, the father becomes emotionally affected, so much so that he cannot respond to his son’s disclosure. He is overwhelmed by his own reactions, becoming so “angered,” “hurt,” “upset,” or “confused” that he cannot attend to his son’s needs. Blocked by his own internal reactions, he is unable to give what his son asks of him.

Phase 2: In turn, the son is unable to tolerate his father’s insular emotional reaction in place of the affirmative response he seeks from him. To accept his father’s non-responses, the son feels he must abandon the needs he has expressed. The only recourse for the son is to retreat again to the defensive distancing which is already at the core of the father-son relationship. The son cannot empathize with the father’s non-responsiveness because to do so is painfully reminiscent of childhood patterns that are associated with his own deep hurt and anger: namely the imperative, “My father’s needs must always come before mine.” The son’s hurt and anger is in reaction to what appears to him to be “just more lame excuses” for Dad’s inability to give the attention, affection or approval he has so long desired from him. Indeed, to the son this seems like Dad’s old ploy, with all the associated historical pain.

This deadly dilemma originated, I believe, during the preverbal level of infancy. As one father’s recollections confirmed, “My son would never look at me. I would hold his face with my hands and force him to look at me, but he would always avert his eyes.” Other men have described an “unnatural indifference” to their fathers during their growing-up years.

During the course of therapy with these fathers, I began to see the deep hurt in them–a hurt that came from their sons’ indifference to their attempts (however meager) to improve the relationship.

Reflecting on his now-elderly father, one client sadly recalled:

“I feel sorry for my father. He always had a certain insensitivity, an emotional incompetence. Many of the interactions at home simply went over his head. He was dense, inadequate. I feel a pity for him.”

These fathers appeared unwilling or unable to be open and vulnerable to their sons; unable to reach out, to hear their sons’ pain and anger with respect to them, and unable to respond honestly. Their emotional availability was blocked and they were unable to turn the relational problem around. Rather they remained removed, seemingly dispassionate and helpless.

In conjoint sessions, none of the fathers were capable of taking the lead in dialogue. When dialogue became stagnant, they were unable to initiate communication. I believe the consistent inability of these fathers to get past their own blocks and reach out to their sons played a significant role in these boys’ inability to move forward into full, normal masculine identification and heterosexuality.

Bibliography

Bieber, I. et al (1962) Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals. New York: Basic Books.

Byne, W. and Parsons, B., “Human sexual orientation: the biologic theories reappraised,” Archives of General Psychiatry, vol. 50:228-239, March l993.

Evans, R. (1969). Childhood parental relationships of homosexual men. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 33:129-135.

Green, Richard (l987) “The Sissy Boy Syndrome” and the Development of Homosexuality. New Haven, Ct.: Yale U. Press.

Moberly, Elizabeth (1983) Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic. Greenwood, S.C.: Attic Press.

Nicolosi, Joseph (l991) Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality; A New Clinical Approach. Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1991.

Satinover, J. (1996). Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

Socarides, Charles (1978). Homosexuality. New York: Jason Aronson.

West, D.J. (1959). Parental figures in the genesis of male homosexuality. International Journal of Social Psychiatry 5:85-97.

Zucker, K. and Bradley, S. (1995) Gender Identity Disorder and Psychosexual Problems in Children and Adolescents. N.Y.: The Guilford Press.

Zuger, Bernard (l988) Is Early Effeminate Behavior in Boys Early Homosexuality? Comprehensive Psychiatry, vol. 29, no. 5 (September/October) p. 509-519.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

Perhaps of greatest concern, unfinished grieving results in a lifestyle of emotional self-protection.

Grief Work is an important part of the psychotherapy process for a considerable number of clients. Such men will benefit from revisiting–from time to time–the painful, despairing place within them.

Most of the clients I see* have experienced a core gender-identity injury. Whenever a person has experienced an injury to the core self, re-experiencing the injury is so deeply unsettling that it feels like a sort of death; it is emotionally agonizing and even physically searing.

In the earliest phase of Grief Work, the client is often surprised by the extent and depth of his buried pain. It is not unusual to hear him say something like, “I can’t believe there is so much sadness in me!” The sadness may spill over into his daily life; it is very common for him to report spontaneous crying during the week “for no reason.” Yet the benefits of revisiting the pain are powerful. One man explained:

“Grief work is allowing me to generate my true deep sadness–feeling hurt and abandoned–all the loneliness that I wasn’t able to explore as a child. I was often very sad; I felt alone in the midst of a large family, and believed that I had no right to express my true feelings of being sad when I was hurt.

In the grief work, I’m able to re-live that pain and experience it in a safe environment rather than bury it and deny it and fear it. I’m gradually working this through now in a healthy way. I know now that we’re meant to feel the pain, not to bury it. And when I feel the pain, then my need to use the homosexuality to cover it up is so much less.”

Working Through the Abandonment-Annihilation Trauma

Essential to Reparative Therapy’s goal of resolving gender deficit is the working-through of the Annihilation-Abandonment trauma that has created this core injury. The injury may have begun with an insecure attachment to the mother. This injury is profoundly felt, yet again, when the boy’s gestures toward fulfilling his masculine ambition are not supported by the father. When peer rejection follows, this wound deepens.

Any time a vital attachment bond fails to develop, the person must address the shame of not having felt authentically known and validated. When he becomes an adult, he must acknowledge and grieve this loss. Grief resolution allows him to release these body-held memories, and in the process, to mourn the loss.

Learning to Live in Emotional Authenticity

The literature on the psychology of bereavement reveals the pathological legacy of unfinished grieving in any person’s life: particularly, an ongoing fear of emotional closeness, and a constrained capacity for genuine intimacy. This defensive avoidance of authentic emotions, which serves to protect against the core narcissistic hurt, is seen in the Shame Posture (formerly called Defensive Detachment), which we so characteristically observe in the men who come to us with same-sex attractions (SSA).

Attachment Loss Threatens Survival

Attachment researchers, most notably John Bowlby, explain the infantile attachment process as rooted in a primal drive which, when thwarted, leaves as its legacy a sense of loss that is almost equivalent to physical death. Human attachment needs are rooted in the drive for basic survival. Therefore the man who has suffered an attachment loss will re-experience it as something like falling into a bottomless abyss–actually dying.

Understandably, the therapist will encounter significant resistance against approaching this unresolved loss. Seeing his client struggle through this death-like experience may bring up his own discomfort with grief, and perhaps require that he face his own unresolved losses. Further, he must be willing to return with some clients again and again–as necessary–to this same place of profound discomfort. Consequently, Grief Work should never be entered into until there is sufficient positive transference to counter the entrenched defenses.

Yet when we pursue this painful work in Reparative Therapy®, we see profound, durable treatment gains. The more the client is able to penetrate and resolve his attachment loss, the less he feels driven toward homosexual behavior as a form of reparation. The process proceeds as follows:

Task #1: To accept the reality of the loss– to come face-to-face with it.

Task #2: To acknowledge its meaning, to confront its significance, to feel the emotional impact of the loss with the support of an empathic “significant other” (in this case, an attuned therapist).

Task #3: To admit to oneself its irreversibility, and to accept the reality that there is no going back and undoing the experience.

Pathological Grief Defined

The term Grief Work was first coined by Freud. From his earliest writings, Freud understood this process to involve helping the client abandon his defenses in order to face a deep loss. He said Grief Work must involve “de-cathecting the libido” from the mental representation of the lost attachment, and when this was successfully accomplished, libido would then be reclaimed through re-cathexis into subsequent healthy attachments.

Freud noted that success can be blocked, however, by the continuance of conflicting feelings toward the loved one; i.e. when unresolved anger remains, which is then turned back against the self.

Freud’s earliest formulations regarding grief remain central to our work, in that we understand homosexuality and its associated symptoms to commonly represent a defense against attachment losses incurred in childhood, often within the Triadic-Narcissistic family.

Grief is a natural human state which should have not only have a beginning, but also an end. Yet there is much personal variability in this emotional process; no two people grieve in the same way. Some people remain trapped in an intense and prolonged reaction against the loss of an emotionally important figure. Others, however, feel little need to repeatedly reenter the loss.

But until the grief is resolved, all emotional roads will lead the man back to the original Annihilation-Abandonment trauma. Perhaps of greatest concern, unfinished grieving results in a lifestyle of narcissistic self-protection.

Healthy grieving is a fully felt and conscious experience that does not involve prolonged suffering. Pathological grief, however, is marked by self-defeating, self-destructive, maladaptive behaviors.

Not surprisingly, the person with a homosexual problem shares traits characteristic of persons stuck in pathological grief: excessive dependency upon others for self-esteem, subclinical depression, maladaptive behaviors, suicidal ideation, emotional instability, as well as difficulty with long-term intimate relationships.

We have observed all of those symptoms to exist at a high rate of frequency among our homosexually oriented clients. In fact, a much higher-than-average rate of psychiatric disorders has been shown, in recent studies, to exist among homosexual men as a group–not just within clinical populations, and not just in cultures that are hostile to gay relationships, but in gay-tolerant societies.(1)

In fact, the extent of the maladaptive behaviors of gay men is so broad that it argues persuasively for the existence of an early, profound injury.

When unresolved grief is a ground-source of same-sex desires, we can understand why we would observe so many self-defeating, maladaptive behaviors. Homoeroticism masks the anguish of this profound loss and serves as a temporary, if ultimately unsatisfying, distraction from the tragedy of a core attachment injury.

The Triadic-Narcissistic Family and Traumatic Loss

Gender is intrinsic to the structure of self in the same way that support beams are intrinsic to a building.

As we have seen, within the Triadic-Narcissistic family structure, the boy’s attempts at individualization and gender actualization are not adequately supported within the family. The results can be disastrous for the temperamentally sensitive boy, whose peers will be quick to reinforce the implicit message that he is somehow defective.

The pre-homosexual boy experiences this attachment rupture differently with each parent: He commonly reports that he felt ignored/ criticized by his father, and manipulated/ emotionally over-engaged by his mother. Both parents may indeed have loved the child within the limitations of their own personalities. However, their interactions communicated to the sensitive child, on some level, that who he really was, was somehow not acceptable.

When an attachment loss is experienced, the child can neither share his distress, nor even accurately conceptualize the nature of his loss. Yet his unmet needs persist, and the loss stay stored within his body memory.

The developmental sequence is therefore –

(1) core attachment loss;

(2) resulting gender-identity deficit;

(3) compensation through homoerotic reparation.

Homosexual acting-out, for such men, is a narcissistic defense against truly mourning the loss of an authentic attachment to one or both parents. (One might say it is ironic that “gay” is the word used to describe a defense against profound sadness.) The homosexual condition can, for these men, be understood as a symptom of chronic and pathological grief.

Whenever we as therapists return the client to his unfinished bereavement, he will be increasingly freed from the grief and shame that have been paralyzing his assertion and propelling him into a life constrained within the False Self.

* Perhaps 80% of the clients who come to the Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic (Encino, CA) fit the model described (suggestive of a core gender-identity deficit); about 20% of cases we see have different histories.

Reference

(1) See, for example, Sandfort, T., R. Graaf, R. Bijl, P. Schnabel (2001) “Same-Sex Sexual Behavior and Psychiatric Disorders: Findings from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study (NEMESIS),” Archives of General Psychiatry 58: 85-91.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

Several media stories recently have promoted the message that no one ever transitions out of same-sex attractions (SSA). As proof, reporters cite the words of prominent ex-gay ministry leaders. These leaders–who consider themselves profoundly changed–nevertheless admit to the media that they sometimes struggle, even today, with unwanted temptation.

People who oppose our message–particularly, many reporters–seized upon the ministry leaders’ message, which was subtle, ambiguous and requiring nuanced consideration, and reduced it to a more attractive (to them) idea that was “short and dumb” but missed the truth of the matter.

As the truism goes, “For every complex question there is one simple answer–and it is usually wrong.” “See?” the media stories seemed to say. “No one ever changes.”

Here, instead, is the nuanced message.

The early Christian ex-gay movement portrayed the overcoming of homosexuality in absolute terms–offering a nice, clean picture of complete transition: With sufficient prayer, faith, and support, a person was said to have overcome SSA once and for all. Once a person repented, if his faith was sufficient, he would enjoy full restoration to heterosexuality.

The result of that overly optimistic view was an angry backlash by another, newly emerging celebrity–the man who once thought he was ex-gay, but now says he is happily gay once again–and wishes he had never tried to change. These “EX-EX-gays” have gone to the media with a story that is very appealing to many ears–the message of absolute sexual liberation.

It was out of concern about this angry backlash that ex-gay ministries have now become very cautious in delivering their message of hope. But they seem to be telling the struggler that he must be prepared to face unending trials. This is not an appealing message to the confused young man who is trying to decide whether to go ahead and tackle the change process, or “just give it up and be gay.”

This bleak message also appears to support the pro-gay claim that homosexuality is fixed and intrinsic for some people. It gives “comfort to the enemy” and to his insistence that although behavioral change may be possible, beneath it all, “Gay is who you really are–it’s your true nature.”

Perhaps we should look at the big picture behind these opposing claims.

A Psychological Solution To An Either-Or Predicament

A solution to this “complex question demanding a simple answer” can be found in the psychological understanding of homosexuality. Following in a long-established–and never disproven–psychodynamic tradition, reparative therapists see SSA as a symbolic defense against the trauma of attachment loss.

Having failed to fully identify with his own gender, the man with SSA romanticizes what he lacks–falling in love with something “out there” that a normal developmental process would have caused to be internalized, not eroticized. (As one gay-activist psychologist, Daryl Bem, aptly explained, the man with SSA “eroticizes what was exotic” in childhood. Bem, though, thinks it is perfectly normal for one’s own gender to feel mysterious and “exotic.”)

Men in Reparative Therapy® disagree; they want to “de-mystify” males and maleness–making them no longer “exotic”–and to have relationships with men characterized by mutuality and authenticity. They believe their biological design makes it clear that humanity was created to partner with the opposite sex.

Nevertheless, these men still have strong unmet needs for male affection, understanding, and affirmation. Utilizing their new adaptive skills to recognize same-sex attractions as “signals,” they know that when homosexual impulses recur, this is an internal indicator that “Something in my life is out of balance.”

The client now knows his unwanted attraction is not about “that other guy,” but about himself. He understands that it is not about sex, but about his present feelings about himself as he relates to others. The recurrence of temptation is a warning that he has compromised his healthy self-needs–most often, through a lack of authentic relational engagement. By authentic engagement, we mean consistently relating to other men in the assertive stance; freeing themselves of shame; maintaining deeply affirming relationships with close male friends; and not allowing themselves to be disempowered or “drained” in relationships with women.

One man, at the very end of his therapy, said, “Thank you, homosexuality. You have forced me to look at deeper issues I tried to avoid.” Similarly, psychotherapist Richard Cohen, when asked by a TV interviewer if he had any further same-sex temptations, answered, “Yes, I do–when I am not taking care of myself.”

Here is what a former client says he learned in therapy:

Therapy has helped me to connect more with men as brothers to be trusted. For most of my adult life, I only felt fearful of and alienated around men–especially men of my own age group. I never felt I belonged to their circle and always feared their rejection.

The general pattern these last few years has tended to be the opposite: I feel connected to most men and at ease in their company, and if and when I feel self-conscious and fearful, I challenge myself to surrender my fears, so that I can reconnect with both my inner man and the men around me.

I’ve becoming more emotionally assertive in situations where formerly I’d be controlled by shame, and in due course, I have developed an unprecedented level of authenticity with others, especially men. I am much better able to read the emotions I am feeling in my body, and I have more access to my overall emotional experiences.

If one thing angers me in life it is this: when gay apologists claim that to reject a ‘gay identity” is to be in denial of my true self. My personal experience tells me the opposite! My therapy has helped bring about in me more self-acceptance, peace and feeling accepted by men, more than was ever conceivably the case in the years since puberty started. When I feel masculine within, I have no emotional need to draw on the men ‘out there’ who are external to me. This is because I feel at one with them. If, however, I don’t deal with my shame, then my masculinity becomes ‘covered over’ and my heart then gravitates to symbols of masculinity found outside myself. I then feel disconnected both from myself, others–particularly men, and from God.

I have abandoned most of the suspicion and discomfort of women I carried around for all my adult life. I see more of the beauty of the opposite sex now than I ever did previously.

Were these changes an ‘accident,’ unconnected to my therapy? I think not. Was my therapy ‘dangerous,’ as some critics with an ideological axe to grind try to claim? Well, if growing in self-acceptance, and feeling now that I belong around men is ‘dangerous,’ then I want more of it!!!!!!

The extent to which my therapy has reaped, and is still reaping results depends largely on how much I challenge myself to continue to implement what I have learned.

Coming Back Home

The Judeo-Christian concept of humanity and traditional psychodynamic psychology share the same understanding that human nature is supposed to “function according to its design.” Both envision mankind as part of a universal heterosexual natural order, where some people struggle with SSA, but it is not intrinsic to their designed nature.

This “signal” view of SSA acknowledges the ongoing nature of the change process, and contradicts the “intrinsically gay” claim. Thus, we see the occasional reemergence of the homosexual impulse not as proof of the truth of gay anthropology, but a call to come back home again to one’s authentic self. Looking at the issue from this “signal” perspective, we see that a gay worldview–both as a personal and political force–is not vindicated, but disempowered.

Articles on subjects of interest are available at therapeuticchoice.com

Learn about:

• how childhood molestation may influence sexual-orientation development–  a subject the scientific community ignores
• the gay movement’s attempt to shut down ethical therapy for “sexually questioning” teens– unless the teen seeks to identify as gay;
• support groups for people coming out of a gay lifestyle;
• the underlying meaning of transgenderism–  not just a “choice”
• upcoming conferences
• how the psychology establishment has marched in lockstep with gay activism; hear stirring voices of scientific dissent

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

Healing moments occur when the client feels seemingly “unbearable” affect, while at the same moment, experiencing the support of the therapist.

Recent advances in psychotherapy have focused on the central importance of affect in the therapeutic process.

Evidence is mounting for our understanding the therapeutic alliance as an “affective correcting experience” (Schore, 1991). Affects–the neurotransmitters of human relations — connect the person with his emotional environment. Affect-Focused Therapy (AFT) is about the way we attach, detach, and re-attach. Treatment focuses on the removal of blocks that disconnect the client from his core feelings.

The particular meeting place of Reparative Therapy® and Affect-Focused Therapy lies in our view that homosexuality is fundamentally an attachment problem. For many of our clients, same-sex behavior appears to be an attempt to repair an insecure attachment to the father. Emotional disregulation, most often in the form of shame blocking masculine assertion, drives many of our same-sex attracted (SSA) clients toward unwanted homosexual enactment. Homosexual activity, fantasy and ideation serve as temporary compensation for failure of the attachment bond.

But we do not reduce SSA solely to father-son attachment failure; in fact, we believe that some homosexual development may well have begun with problems in mother-son attunement. Indeed, the effectiveness of Reparative Therapy® is increased by use of techniques that also explore early mother-son attachment problems. Because the mother-child bond shapes and refines our earliest sense of self, therapy must also revisit that attachment.

Interpersonal rapport is, in the final analysis, what characterizes our deepest humanity and determines our internal equilibrium. Thus our treatment process has moved away from more traditional attempts at resolving intra-psychic conflict, and more in the direction of affect regulation, with the therapist as affect-regulation facilitator.

The quintessential model of affective contact is the Double Loop, a powerful therapeutic achievement between client and therapist.

A Radical Therapeutic Resonance

The flow of affect is determined by attachment. Traditional psychodynamic concepts such as “internalized objects” are metaphors for this biologically based phenomenon of neurological transmission. What we call “internalization of the object,” for example, is actually a body-held memory–a conditioned affective response.

AFT requires the therapist to exert a level of emotional engagement and empathy that is far beyond, even contradictory to, the traditional psychotherapeutic approach. AFT concentrates upon the fine details of the effective intersubjective therapeutic exchange. The therapist must be fully emotionally “present” in order to elicit, and deeply share, the client’s visceral experience.

Affective expansion has been shown to occur when there is a radical level of client-therapist resonance. Utilizing AFT techniques, the reparative therapist attempts to evoke the client’s expression of core affects and to expand his somatic awareness. As trust and confidence build within their exchange, the client begins to feel confident enough to experience an authentic exchange with other men. Later, he can begin to more authentically engage women.

Attunement Changes Brain Structure

Each person’s neurological structure is designed to be synchronized with other neurological structures. As Stern reminds us, “Our brains were designed to lock in with other brains” (2002). But human attachments can break down (as illustrated by the Double Bind) and then reconnect (through the Double Loop). Interruptions of affect–through anxiety, shame, and other inhibitors–disconnect the person from his emotional environment, causing a shutdown.

Personal identity development is the cumulative result of years of attunement with others. Our level of attunement with others, determines our inner relationship with ourselves. Traumatic malattunement–the inevitable consequence of Double Bind communication–creates shame, and shame creates intrapsychic detachment. In contrast, attunement with the therapist in the Working Alliance (a consequence of the Double Loop experience) resolves this barrier of shame and fosters self-reattachment.

Thus, an affective “turning on,” or openness, is the goal of Reparative Therapy®. In AFT, the therapist maintains empathic attunement in the Working Alliance to facilitate unification of the left brain and right brain hemispheres. In so doing, the he metaphorically “embeds” himself between the client’s right brain and his left brain.

It is through this connectedness with the therapist that the client allows himself to feel the bodily sensations that are associated with his painful early experiences. Healing moments occur when the client can feel what seems to be unbearable core feeling, while at the same moment, experiencing the care and support of the therapist. Thus, in a process of interactive repair, their attuned relationship actually changes the neurological structure of the brain.

For the client who grew up in the narcissistic family, the early trauma of the parental Double Bind has created an attunement split. Through reattunement, the Double Loop unifies the client with himself, then unifies the self with others. Attunement with another leads back to greater attunement with self.

From Anxiety To Spontaneity

Affect-Focused Therapy rapidly accelerates the client’s encounter with his fear-filled affective life. The therapist encourages him to feel and express his anxiety-provoking bodily feelings and sensations, while at the same time, supporting him in maintaining their interpersonal contact. Toleration of this previously unbearable affect is possible because of their mutual emotional rapport.

Through that Double Loop experience, the client learns that painful emotions are not intolerable in themselves– but rather, it was the early sense of parental abandonment associated with those emotions that actually rendered them intolerable.

The goal of therapy, therefore, is the integration of conflicting affects. When the client experiences the reintegration of these once negative-seeming affects, he experiences a surprising eruption of spontaneity, authenticity, vitality, and a feeling of self-integrity–all of which is prompted by the restructuring of the True Self. This restructuring is expressed as a greater outflow of energy in relating to others, and less preoccupation with oneself.

With the emergence of the True Self, we gradually see the establishment of new friendships and the strengthening of old and long-neglected family ties.

A Subtle Synchronicity

When Affect-Focused Therapy functions at its best, we see a corrective experience of sublime attunement with subtle, highly nuanced human communication. Therapist and client share an implicit knowledge–that non-verbal, pre-explicit experience that can occur between two people in the recognition that “I know that you know that I know.”

In many hours of analyzing audio- and videotape recordings of actual psychotherapy sessions at my clinic, I have seen how this subtle synchronicity emerges, with each person in the therapeutic dyad eventually having the sense of what the other is trying to express. Stern offers the example of two people kissing: the speed, direction, angle of approach–all perfectly coordinated for a “soft landing” (without crashing teeth)–is a miracle of psychic intimacy with “maximal complexity” of thinking, intending and then doing. Stern says it simply:

“Our minds are not created alone; they are co-created. Our nervous system is ready to be taught by other peoples’ nervous systems, which transforms us.”

Psychotherapy is the second opportunity to integrate one’s emotional life. In attempting to explain how this therapeutic second opportunity works through the model of sublime attunement, Stern speaks of the importance of setting the correct tempo for “moving along”–the unspoken regulation of the rhythm and intensity of the back-and-forth between two people. He also notes the importance of “field regulation,” which is the assessment of the other’s receptivity with questions such as “Do you really like me?” and “What’s actually happening between us right now?” He is particularly interested in what he calls “‘now’ moments,” when the entire frame of the picture alters to zoom in on two people as they are pulled into the present moment, while experiencing an intense “existential presentness.”

These “now moments” contain a heightened anxiety and the sense that somehow, “this moment is important,” either for good or ill in the relationship. Personal exposure and vulnerability are a basic part of these moments; we see an excitement, a recognition of each other on a deeper level, and perhaps a slight, embarrassed smile that recognizes this sometimes-awkward vulnerability and personal exposure. Such moments, which Martin Buber calls “moments of meeting,” cannot be forced; but as therapists, we can certainly, as Stern says, “be ready to coax such opportunities into existence.”

Stern’s description of the textured aspects of these central moments constitutes our Double Loop.

Two Binary Affects: Assertion Vs. Shame

AFT helps us distinguish the basic “on” (attaching) affects versus the “off” (detaching) affects. Common detaching affects include anxiety, fear, and shame. Attaching affects are trust, empathy, and love. This fundamental “open/closed” distinction, described by Fosha as the “green signal” versus the “red signal,” is equivalent to the sympathetic versus the parasympathetic neurological response.

Making the same distinction but in different words, Schore identifies affective openness and attunement, in contrast to a “freeze” response. This freeze response is much like Reparative Therapy’s “shame” response–the consequence of the boy’s feeling humiliated for his masculine gestures.

Clients have expressed this experience of the affective shift as the difference between–

exploding – imploding
heart open – heart closed
inflated – deflated
expansive – constrictive

These vitality affects versus inhibitory affects are illustrated by the Pike Phenomenon (Wolverton, 2005). In an experiment, a pike fish is placed in a tank with live minnows. The pike immediately begins eating all the minnows it sees. Then an invisible glass cylinder is placed over the pike, separating it from the minnows. Attempts to eat the minnows result in the pike hitting its nose on the glass cylinder, causing it pain. The cylinder is then removed, but the pike, anticipating pain, makes no more attempt to eat the minnows. The vitality response has been lost and the inhibitory response is substituted.

The Pike Phenomenon illustrates a conditioned response that inhibits healthy assertion. For our clients, there is an anticipation of shame for their gendered assertion.

Anticipatory shame represents a somatic “flashback” which switches the body into a defensive, shut-down mode.

Emotional Shutdown On A Biological Level

It is sometimes helpful to explain to the client that his shutdown is a physiological, bodily reaction. This explanation helps him observe his own bodily shifts as they occur in the moment. Developing a self-observant stance can increase the client’s ego strength as he observes his body (not “himself,” but “his body”) shift to the shut-down mode. The facilitation of the client’s observation of his own bodily response is similar to Eye-Movement Desensitization Therapy’s repeated instruction to the client to “go back to” and then “let go of” the traumatic image.

Another term for the Shame Moment is the “freeze response,” in which the person loses his somatic vitality and the body becomes rigid and stiff. This is similar to the Freudian concept of dissociation, the earliest phenomenon of study in the history of psychoanalysis, which is triggered when the person anticipates a recurrence in the present of some past trauma. In dissociation there is a “segmentation of minds,” each possessing its own “cluster of thoughts, feelings and memories” (Jung) which are held in the body. When someone is “in one mind” (a cluster of embodied memories), it is hard for him to recall the other “mind,” and if the other mind is recalled–i.e., felt in the body–then it has already left the first mind.

For example, when a person walks into a restaurant feeling hungry and smelling good food, he is in one “mind”; two hours later, when he has eaten his dinner and walks out, he is in a very different “mind,” and it is virtually impossible for him to recapture the totality of that earlier mindset of hunger and anticipation.

A client reported going on a weekend trip where he was camping and shooting with his friends. This experience put him into the Assertion state, where couldn’t recall the other “mind” of homosexual temptation. A week later, when he was back into the shame zone, the opposite had occurred: he couldn’t recall the mindset of Assertion.

Shame Posture Vs. The Assertive State

Reparative Therapy® carefully examines the self-states, especially regarding the scenario preceding homosexual enactment. The simultaneous experience of feeling shame in the body, and at the same time experiencing the acceptance and understanding of the attuned therapist, works to diminish the physiological “charge” of shame.

When clients are in the Assertive Stance, they can vaguely recall, but cannot intensely feel, their homoerotic attractions. When they shift into the Shame Posture, they cannot recall what it was like not to have compelling homoerotic feelings.

Shame, as we have noted, has, like all other the self-states, an evolutionary survival function. It is a powerful controlling tool used by the “pack” for socialization that aids survival of the group–and thus the individual. (Shame, it should be noted, is not the same as guilt–guilt results from a negative judgment of one’s own behavior, while shame is a basic physiological response.) A child will be shamed–which is to say, threatened by expulsion from the pack–for behaviors that risk the stability and survival of the group. (Some researchers posit that this autonomic response of shame may be the biological basis for conscience.)

The self-state of shame brings to mind the work of Freud’s mentor, Pierre Janet, known as the father of dissociation. Janet laid the foundation for Freud’s later work on hysteria– where past events, when held outside of consciousness, still retain an influence on present behavior. Dissociation represents the mind’s attempt to block out traumatic childhood memories which still, on an unconscious level, feel overwhelmingly threatening.

Somatic Shift Leads To New Meaning

Reparative Therapy® focuses on Body Work because we understand the unconscious mind to hold a buried “body memory” that operates without cognitive awareness. The body does not deceive us, but the mind can do so. Freud said the goal of psychoanalysis was that “Where ‘id’ was, there ego shall be”(1933). He meant that psychoanalysis replaces unconscious, irrational impulses with self-awareness and rationality. We may revise this dictum to propose that “Where the somatic shift is, there new meaning shall be,” because the mind can give new understanding to body memories as they are reexperienced.

For example, the gay-identified man sees an attractive male and experiences a sexual arousal. His self-understanding is “I’m sexually attracted to him because I’m gay. Such attractions are normal and natural for me.” For this man, an attractive male is associated with sexual gratification, and he comes to believe that such feelings authentically define him.

However, the non-gay homosexual has the same somatic reaction to the same attractive man, but his internal narrative is quite different. He says: “I’m attracted to that man because he possesses qualities of masculinity that I feel are lacking right now within myself. And what can I do to change that?”

This is the essential difference between the gay-identified man and the non-gay homosexual–the way they interpret their body responses.

What the gay-identified man takes at face value, the non-gay homosexually oriented man instead, chooses to question. The gay man believes this attraction is “out there,” reflecting his true self-identity.

But the “non-gay” SSA man sees the same feeling as a catalyst for asking himself, “It’s not about the other guy’s attractiveness. What is going on ‘in here’ right now to generate these feelings that contradict my true, designed nature?'”

References

Fosha, Diana (2000). The Transforming Power of Affect: A Model for Accelerated Change. N.Y.: Basic Books.

Freud, S. (1933). New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. S.E., volume 22, p. 80.

Schore, A. (1991) “Early Superego development: The emergence of shame and narcissistic affect regulation in the practicing period,” Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, 14, 187-205.

Stern, D. (2002). “Why Do People Change in Psychotherapy?” Presentation. University of California at Los Angeles, March 9, 2002; Continuing Education Seminars, 1023 Westholme Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90024.

Wolverton Mountain Enterprises, 2005, www.wolverton-mountain.com/articles/pike.htm.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

The gender-identity phase of development is marked by a surge of “ambition” to achieve gender competence. When there is a failure in this phase of development, a core identity injury results. Grief work helps the client overcome the injury.

The triadic narcissistic family offers a useful model for understanding male homosexuality and its foundation in a failure of attachment to the same-sex parent. The narcissistic family is not found in the backgrounds of all same-sex attracted (SSA) men; however, we often see evidence of it in our clinical work with men seeking to overcome SSA.

In normal families, children know they are important, and they sense their needs and feelings as important to their parents. But rather than providing an understanding, accurately attuned, and supportive emotional environment for the son’s developing masculine self, the narcissistic parents, as a parental team, systematically “fail to see” the boy as a gendered individual person.

“Shaming” Masculinity vs. “Failing to Elicit” It

Recent biological research suggests that some boys have experienced a biological developmental “accident” in which their developing brain was never completely masculinized while they were still in utero. When such children reach the gender-identity phase of about two years old, the “surge of ambition” to achieve masculine competency will be much weaker than that of the typical boy. Such a boy may fail to develop a normal masculine gender identity if the parents do not actively elicit it from him. Such parents did not actively “shame” the son for his strivings but simply failed to be attuned to the boy’s special need for active support in calling forth his true, gendered nature.

The Problem of Malattunement. In this family, through distinctly different interactions with each parent, the boy experiences parental malattunement in his efforts to acquire his masculine self-identity. Within the narcissistic family the child must be “for” the parents, i.e. “the parental team.” The malattunement he most often experienced was through being ignored/belittled by father, and manipulated into taking on the role of intimate companion to mother.

There may be anger against the self as a defense against his own weakness and inability to break away from the mother to acquire a distinct masculine identity. In addition to that anger against the self, the child may have been made to feel bad about his feeling sad. “You’re upsetting everybody else.” “There’s no reason to be unhappy and you have nothing to complain about.”

Within this narcissistic family structure, the boy’s unsuccessful attempts at gender actualization result in an attachment loss. Together, the parents evoked an abandonment-annihilation trauma within the boy for which now, as a man, he must grieve. This is the core trauma which has led to such a man’s same-sex attraction in adulthood.

The Boy’s Temperament as a Key Factor

Temperament is a key factor in the failure to gender-identify. Another boy who was less temperamentally sensitive — perhaps even this boy’s own brother who may have been more outgoing, emotionally resilient, and assertive– would likely push harder and be more persistent in seeking his father’s attention, making it less easy for the father to detach from him. By the same token, an assertive and outgoing boy often has more in common with the father and he will be actively sought out by the father. The assertive-resilient boy will also be less likely to form an over-intimacy with the mother and to seek out her sheltering protections as a means of avoiding the masculine challenge.

Thus, it is the emotionally vulnerable boy– sensitive, intuitive, sociable, gentle, easily hurt– who is most likely to incur a gender-identity injury and to give up the masculine challenge. This boy needed special help to leave the comfortable sphere of the mother; and perhaps his father did not actively injure him, but simply failed to do the essential job– essential for this particular boy— of actively calling forth his true masculine nature.

Attachment Loss and Shame

Clients express not only a sense of gender deficit, but a deeper, not easily articulated sense of loss and emptiness. Various men have tried to describe it in their own way. It is that despairing place that is the source of homosexual impulse. It is also the source of the client’s deepest resistance to treatment.

The developmental sequence is first attachment loss, then gender deficit. If homosexuality is a form of attachment loss, then the question becomes; “Why do some children who experience insecure attachment eventually adapt to the loss, while other children do not, and develop maladaptive defenses against it?” To begin to answer this question requires, first of all, the understanding that the child’s defense is not homosexuality per se, but a gender-identity deficit- which he only later unconsciously seeks to “repair” through homosexual enactment.

Said one client:

“When I went into the gay porn sites, as soon as I got started, I realized how depressed I had been. I realized, too, that I knew I was depressed but was avoiding doing anything about it.”

“The power of gay porn images reflects my own inadequacy. The power of the image is not what he is, but what I am not. And I can go pursue the distraction of what he is, or confront the painful reality of what I am not.”

The gender-identity phase, like all other phases of the child’s development, is marked by a surge of “ambition” to achieve a particular competence. Along with this biologically driven “ambition” comes a narcissistic investment in the outcome. When there is a failure in that phase of development, there is a vulnerability to shame. Thus, this understanding of the homosexual condition sees not just a gender-identity deficit, but also a core identity injury which brings us to the use of grief work.

The person with a homosexual problem will exhibit psychological features commonly found in any client who has become stuck in pathological grief. Those include excessive dependency upon others for self-esteem, emotional maladaption, thoughts of suicide, instability and insecurity, and difficulty in establishing and maintaining long-term intimate relationships. These symptoms are a defense against mourning the loss of authentic attachment to both parents. Thus it ironic that declaring himself “gay” is a defense against profound, underlying sadness.

Consequently, the therapist will attempt to offer a “corrective experience”; i.e., serving as the good parent by not punishing– but hearing, understanding and even valuing the experience of grief. The therapist must also recognize and interpret the client’s primary defense, which is the client’s anticipation of being shamed for feeling his loss. This is the essential function of shame– to defend against grief. It is easier to blame himself (and spend the rest of life punishing himself for not feeling loved) than to face the profound reality of loss of the parent’s accurate attunement and the attachment he should have had with his father. The client must openly share that fear of shame with the therapist, in order to engage the opportunity for healing.

Deep grief work is often met with deeply entrenched resistance precisely because of the intense pain resulting from the loss of attachment. The client literally feels that if he expresses his pain, he will die. This primal feeling is biologically rooted and evidenced in mammalian group behavior; after all, the shunned, rejected member of the pack rightly senses that he will not be able to survive alone.

It is not the pain, but the fear of the pain which is the greater source of resistance in grief work. The desperate quality of this distress is understandable since, from childhood, separation meant annihilation. Now, as an adult, the client in therapy is still not secure in the belief that he can enter that deep pain and survive. So it is not reliving the trauma but the fear of reliving it which is the greatest source of resistance.

Grief work is approached through the client’s own presenting complaints and his self-identified conflicts. Those conflicts often involve the client’s shame for efforts at masculine assertion. When pursued, these conflicts often lead the client into deeper emotions. Most often, sad and angry feelings will surface when the client allows himself to fully feel the sadness and emptiness associated with his attachment loss.

The next phase of therapy requires a meaningful integration of the loss. Now, as an adult in therapy, the client with SSA can re-create a coherent narrative — namely, the making of meaning now, in the present, of his attachment losses in the past.

Resolution means the client must decide to live in a realistic present, making realistic plans for the future. He chooses to have a healthy perception of reality with the people in his life today– not needing them to be better than they are. No longer is there the inarticulate sense of narcissistic entitlement that others are obliged to compensate him for his past hurts.

This grief work is a humanizing process, in that it demands the abandonment of narcissistic defenses against experiencing deep humility. The work of grief is the back-and-forth tension between two inhibiting affects – shame and fear, versus the other two core affects – sadness and anger.

Resolution necessitates the assimilation of the loss into one’s personal schema, one’s worldview or personal narrative. That narrative requires a coherent understanding of himself today. As the client faces his illusions and distortions, he spontaneously expresses curiosity about his true identity. “Who am I other than my false self?”

Resolution is the catalyst for personal growth, identity transformation, and the establishment of new ways of relating. It means growing beyond emotional isolation and chronic loneliness, and making a renewed investment in authentic relatedness with people of both genders. Along with this greater capacity for genuine intimacy, comes a diminishment of same-sex attraction’s illusionary power.

Reference

Nicolosi, J. (1991) Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality. N.J.: Jason Aronson.