The Stress of Coming Out

The concept of coming out can be applied to any type of neurosis. All of us, in varying degrees, are in the process of either coming out of or going back into our closets. To live as social human beings, we constantly resort to wearing various facades. Only in relatively few situations can we truly be open, spontaneous, and honest with ourselves. Perhaps that is the reason why we analysts rely so much on dreams. In dreams we are alone with ourselves in a world we have created, and there is no need for these facades. Our feelings come forth with less of the distortion brought on by social pressure. We are much closer to our true being than we are at any other time. Of course, I am referring to the entire meaning of the dream-not just to the manifest content but also to the latent or background meaning.

The stress that accompanies our true or real self stems from many sources. Unfortunately, in many of us the real self is buried under many layers of neurotic defenses, insincere facades, pretensions, and pseudo-solutions. As analysts, we attempt to liberate our patient from the neurotic character structure he has created for himself. To our patient, this character structure is often more real than the genuine feelings which, in order to comply with the prevailing expectations of the surrounding psychological environment and his own fantasies about himself, have been repressed for many years. To help him relinquish his neurotic defenses is like trying to take away the crutches on which an injured person relies, and the stress of coming out is comparable to this analogy: an individual comes out and experiences his true feelings without the aid of the neurotic structure on which he has relied for many years. Anxiety, fear of failure, and often panic ensue, for the patient is caught in a Catch 22 of his own making. Just as he experiences anxiety in attempting to express his real feelings, so not to do so engenders the anxiety of not being himself. The roots of this latter s