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Becoming Gay: The Journey To Self-Acceptance
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Product Description
The importance of living authentically—accepting one’s homosexuality and embracing a positive gay identity—is at the heart of Dr. Richard Isay’s powerful work on the psychological development of gay men. In the candid language of personal case histories, including his own, Isay shows how disguising one’s sexual identity can induce anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. He looks at the dilemma of gay men who are closeting in heterosexual marriages as well as at the specific concerns of adolescents, older men, and those confronted with HIV or AIDS. Isay exposes the tenacity with which psychoanalysis has clung to outdated views of homosexuality. Becoming Gay offers great insight for students of psychology, gender studies, and sociology.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #135168 in Books
- Published on: 1997-06-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 224 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
The author of Being Homosexual (LJ 4/1/89) tells how it all gets started.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Isay follows his normalizing Freudian book on gay male psychodynamics, Being Homosexual (1989), with a consideration of how men accept their gayness. Nearly every chapter of the new book takes up self-acceptance during a different condition of life: adolescence, married-with-children, HIV-infected or living with AIDS, older age, and even, since Isay recounts his own transition, as a professional psychotherapist. Isay does not report only success stories: one married man he treated, unable to make the change from heterosexual front to comfortable homosexuality, ended up a suicide. Further, Isay concedes that some men manageably opt for not coming out: two married men he reports on decided to remain so and carefully regulate or altogether avoid homosexual contact. But Isay's thrust is that acknowledging one's gayness and being happy with it are possible, with the help of psychoanalysis, at any time after sexual maturity. Unsaid is that most gay men can't afford the time and money that Isay's Freud-derived psychoanalysis absorbs. Ray Olson
From Kirkus Reviews
Isay (Being Homosexual, 1989) discusses the role psychoanalysis can play in helping gay men to embrace their identity. Himself a gay psychoanalyst, Isay frequently slips into awkward phrasings and clinical jargon (his meaning is always clear, but his words aren't always felicitous--verbs like ``self- acknowledge'' creep into his prose). Though the book is enlivened by examples from both his life and his therapeutic practice, he sometimes uses frustratingly general and stilted language to describe them. In recounting an event from his own life, for instance, Isay writes that differences between himself and his lover ``enhanced the relationship''--yet he doesn't say what those differences were. He also devotes a chapter to a thoughtful discussion of the dilemma of the gay therapist: When is it appropriate for him to disclose his sexual orientation to patients? He explores the particular needs of gay teenage patients, gay men married to women (as Isay himself was), patients with HIV and AIDS, and elderly men who are just beginning to embrace a gay identity. Interestingly, unlike many in his profession, he takes an optimistic view of the potential for successful therapy for the gay elderly. An especially useful final chapter lucidly and concisely outlines the author's struggles to change the well-known and entrenched heterosexist biases within the profession of psychoanalysis--efforts that, after an eight-year battle, culminated in the American Psychoanalytic Association's 1991 statement opposing discrimination against lesbians and gay men who want to pursue training in its affiliated institutes. This was, in effect, a dramatic disavowal of the APA's unwritten policy, and an indication that the profession may be abandoning its longtime practice of pathologizing homosexuality. An accessible glimpse of a gay-positive approach to psychoanalysis, which should interest both the gay and psychoanalytic communities. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Customer Reviews
Not What I expected
When I read the reviews for this book I was looking for information and guidance to begin my journey of self-acceptace. Instead I found this book to deal more with the authors coming out and his relationships with both patients and therapists. While the author had some good thoughts, the book did nothing to help me in my struggle to accept this part of me.
A kind book by a kind man
Though I have never met him, after reading this book, I felt that Richard Isay must be kind man. Like his other book, Being Homosexual, also a good and quick read, he offers short histories and good observations, gently made. While I am personally intrigued by the current academic debates, and the history of Freudian theory which preceded it, in both of which Isay has made his own mark, I cannot help but be grateful that wherever the truth may lie, Isay and his advice are both supportive and practical.
This Book Made Me Proud To Be A Homosexual
I was born in Poland and had to deal with not only coming to America and facing the prejudices of being an immigrant, but I was a homsexual. Like most men in my situation I hid my identity to my friends and family. After reading this book it made me feel good about myself and who I am. I am now open with my family and even more importantly open with myself. This book made me feel better about who I am and my life is now the best I could of ever possibly imagined. For this I thankyou Richard A. Isay and for you amazing eye-opening book.
