Psychoanalysis and Women's Experiences of “Coming-Out”: The Necessity of Becoming a “Bee Charmer”

“Coming-out,” identifying as homosexual to self and others, is an intrapsychic and interpersonal process through which identity is both created and revealed. Coming-out is not a process through which some “essential” sexual nature or orientation is disclosed, but is rather a psychosocial process in which a woman must position herself within, or outside of, or in ambivalent conflict with, her culture's definitions of, and names for, same-sex attraction and relationships. Wherever the woman positions herself, whatever names she calls herself, coming-out is always accompanied by anxiety and by wishes and impulses both to hide and to reveal. When a woman says to herself and to others that she wants, or has, a primary relationship with another woman, she is faced with the immediate acquisition and management of a new, and a devalued, social and psychological identity. Coming-out is understandably, therefore, a primary subject in gay and lesbian psychological literature (e.g., Bell and Weinberg, 1978; de Monteflores, 1986; Hart and Richardson, 1981; Herdt, 1989; Stanley and Wolfe, 1980; Weeks, 1977). Although gay and lesbian therapists have addressed the psychological dimensions, developmental tasks, and stages of the acquisition of gay or lesbian identity (Cass, 1979, 1984; Coleman, 1982; Garnets and Kimmel, 1991; Hanley-Hackenbruck, 1988), psychoanalysis has directed very little attention to coming-out (Friedman, 1988; Gershman, 1983; Isay, 1989; Morgenthaler, 1988) and instead has focused on attempts to ascertain the etiology of homosexuality and to describe