Discussion of "being gay and becoming a psychoanalyst: across three generations"

S. Vaughan

The author discusses three papers of Roughton, Drescher and Leli on the subject of "Being Gay and Becoming a Psychoanalyst: Across Three Generations". The discussion reports that changes within the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) during this past decade have been remarkable. For Roughton, becoming an analyst involved denial and control of homosexual feelings and longings, acceptance of these feelings as psychopathology and a commitment to change. It involved the construction and careful maintenance of what he terms a public quasifalse self, which required exhausting constant self-monitoring lest his secret slip out. He consciously constructed a false façade designed to protect his secret. This is an experience that is familiar to many gay men and lesbians, whether they are in psychoanalytic training or not. While the APsaA made major strides in the past decade in terms of acceptance, progression and graduation of gay and lesbian candidates, Leli_s experiences as an applicant, and later, as a candidate were clearly different than those of his heterosexual colleagues_apparently due to lingering concerns about how homosexual applicants and candidates are different. As Leli_s experience demonstrated, having to defend one_s difference as non-pathological to psychoanalytic interviewers and supervisors is a difficult task. Drescher_s experience at the White Institute could serve as a model for integrating gay and lesbian analysts into the American Psychoanalytic Association: from none, to one, to a group, to integration. The motivations for the recent radical changes within psychoanalytic organizations toward lesbians and gay men is further explored.<Copies are available from: Haworth Document Delivery Center. The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580, USA>