A study of South African gay male psychotherapists’ experienced subjectivities

Abstract

Primary objective: This study’s primary objective was to investigate the subjectivities of gay male psychotherapists, with a particular focus on how they conceive of their identities, specifically their gay and psychotherapist identities, the potential overlapping of these identities, and how the overlap may play out intersubjectively in the privacy of therapeutic settings between gay male psychotherapists and their patients. Research design: The research design used a psychosocial approach focused on uncovering how intrapsychic life and work are influenced or mirrored by wider social constructions, using a sample of practising gay male psychotherapists. Methods and procedures: Ten self-identified gay male psychotherapists with at least three years of clinical experience were asked to participate voluntarily in semi-structured interviews. The transcribed data were analysed, using psychosocial methods, and paying particular attention to reflexivity. Main outcomes and results: This research illustrated how the subjective contemplation of overlapping gay and psychotherapist identities ran through the lived experiences of this sample, in terms of their meaning-making and understanding of their professional and personal lives. Themes that emerged around what it means to be a gay male psychotherapist were othering and feeling othered, which closely mirrored developmental considerations and their lived experiences of othering, the complexity of self-disclosure by gay male psychotherapist and problems of erotic countertransference and, finally, powerful novel vulnerable and colliding aspects of considering reflexivity that emerged for both gay psychotherapists and the researcher in the research encounter.