You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Healthy childhood development includes experiences of acceptance and attention. A child's expression of homoerotic longings in the context of a homophobic culture often precludes the provision of these necessary narcissistic supplies. For some of the men who eventually claim a gay identity, attempts to fill the void left by the lack of acceptance can result in compensatory attention-begetting behaviors, such as driven sexuality and
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the annual conference of the Institute for Human Identity, New York, February 1997, and in the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center lecture series, “Contemporary Approaches to Gender and Sexuality,” March 1998.
Joseph Canarelli, C.S.W., is a psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice and at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health in New York City; staff psychotherapist, the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy.
Gilbert Cole, C.S.W., is in private practice in New York City; is affiliated with the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center; and is an Instructor at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy, New York, and the Colorado Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies.
Charles Rizzuto, C.S.W., is a faculty member of the Shirley M. Ehrenkranz School of Social Work, New York University; Conference Coordinator for the Institute for Human Identity; and he maintains a private practice in psychotherapy and supervision in New York City.
compulsive body building. The challenge of analytic work with patients who rely on such forms of externalization involves finding the ways to move beyond the currency of the body surface to discovering and reinvigorating interiority. It is then that the focus of the work becomes conflicts regarding self-acceptance. In this paper, we present clinical material illustrating these processes. Vicissitudes of transference-countertransference experience in the gay male therapist/gay male patient dyad are also discussed.