cover image Being Homosexual

Being Homosexual

Richard A. Isay. Farrar Straus Giroux, $17.95 (159pp) ISBN 978-0-374-11012-3

Many psychiatrists still tend to view homosexuality as an emotional disturbance arising from unsatisfactory childhood relations with parents. Disputing them, Isay, a psychiatrist who has treated gay men for more than 20 years, views his patients' homosexual orientation as totally normal, nonpathological and constitutional in origin. In this succinct, clearly written volume, he maps the developmental stages in the gay male's life cycle, from the small boy's awareness of same-sex impulses to ``self-labeling,'' coming out, homosocialization (forming friendships with other gay men) and mature integration of one's sexual identity. Isay is especially good at showing how a rejecting father and a close-binding or denigrating mother can damage the gay male's sense of self-worth. He brings a liberal, liberating, neo-Freudian perspective to a discussion of gay relationships, homoerotic fantasies, bisexuality, the effects of the AIDS epidemic and society's increasing homophobia on gay men's emotional development. (Apr.)