Growing up hidden: notes on understanding male homosexuality

Beginning with Freud and briefly reviewing some contemporary approaches to the treatment of gay men, this paper explores theoretical attempts to understand and explain homosexuality. The author finds covert and not-so-covert remnants of pathologizing in most theoretical approaches that contribute to the phenomenon of being hidden even in psychoanalysis. Further, the author emphasizes the nonmonolithic structure of homosexuality and the consequent need to look at each case individually. The author advocates a nonjudgmental, sustained empathic approach to the understanding and treatment of gay men. Clinical examples illustrate the individual meanings of homoerotic longings.