Hi, so I visited my therapist this week and we were talking about my sexuality, a hot topic in our sessions nowadays, since I just made some discoveries. In the past though, I also told her about my bad relationship with my dad. He's always degrading me, telling me I'm not good enough, blaiming me for stuff that goes wrong, has even said I should just hang myself, on occasions. Luckily I have a very loving mother, who kind of evens things out, but that doesn't stop me from feeling very hurt and insecure, because of him always doing this. While all of us tell him to stop, he just ignores us and keeps on putting me and my siblings down. He doesn't really realize he's doing anything wrong and refuses to go into therapy, or anything. Sometimes he seems almost bipolar: he'll either insult people or whine about everything or he'll make these stupid ridiculous jokes and seems "happy"( more of his public persona.) He also ignores my mom, never tells her where he's going and they practically have a non-relationship. But anywho: my therapist has suggested this might well be one of the reasons why I've grown to like women and don't have much affection towards men. Now, I've studied psychology and from an Electra-complex-perspective, it kind of makes a little sense. Any others have an opinion on this? is this just my therapist failing to understand or can it be a valid reason?
It's a bit half baked, life experiences don't mould sexuality. If anything people who have fathers such as yours are much more likely to seek out an older partner as a 'replacement'.
Yeah I don't know if I buy that. I understand the argument, and perhaps it could influence homosexuality (as I do believe people's environment can shape their sexuality), I also think it's classic for girls with "daddy issues" to pursue relationships with bad men. I.e. rather than trying to get away from men and pursue the same sex, they pursue the opposite sex still, just the bad types like their father, seeing that type as normal. So it's hard to say.
If your therapist is still using the psychoanalytical approach to things such as sexual orientation, I personally would look for another therapist, seeing as the Oedipus and Electra Complexes have both been proved to be not very accurate.
I'm with Bryan in suggesting you talk to another therapist. This person obviously has not done much critical science-based research on sexual orientations.
I'm going to offer a slightly different perspective. From the study of sexual abuse, we know that abuse does not appear to affect sexual orientation. Although there are some pretty troubling statistics -- about 40% of gay or lesbian people have a history of sexual abuse, which is a somewhat higher percentage than our hetero counterparts, there's no evidence of a causal relationship. However, from the study of female survivors of sexual abuse, we know that many of them have difficulties having healthy relationships with men. And at least part of this stems from deep emotional wounding and a sense of not feeling safe around men. There is some similar, corroborating evidence that extreme emotional abuse of a female child by a father figure appears to also impact the sense of safety and comfort around men. None of this should be particularly surprising. Here's the interesting and nuanced part: Referring to the population above, most of these women don't actually feel strong sexual attraction toward women. But we also know, from the sexology research, that the arousal patterns of women and men are very different -- this is one of many reasons why a "sexual enhancement" drug equivalent to Viagra has been so elusive to deveop. So for (hetero) women, anyway the sense of connection and emotional intimacy and safety has a strong correlation with arousal and attraction. (Far less research on lesbian populations that I'm aware of.) So if we look at all of the above, we can infer with a pretty high degree of reliability that women who have suffered severe emotional abuse by a man may feel less safe, and therefore less sexual arousal, around men. Now... interestingly, to the extent that very primal, root sexual arousal can be measured in women, these abused women will still feel the deep, primal attraction to opposite-sex partners, but the conditioning may make it safer for them to seek out same-sex partners. This is one of the reasons why therapy for sexual abuse is complicated and requires a lot of nuance and very thoughtful and difficult work on the part of the therapist. In your case, though the abuse was not sexual in nature, the continuing and pervasive nature could, theoretically, impact who you feel comfortable around, which could easily be mistaken for sexual arousal. However, it's complicated to separate out what is sexual attraction based on the emotional abuse, and what is authentic sexual orientation, which is not likely affected by the abuse. It's these relatively rare situations, where someone may never have really been gay in the first place, but developed a strong aversion to opposite-sex partners due to conditioning, that the religious crazies hang their hats and claim to convert gay people to straight. The problem is, they didn't convert anything; they helped the client work through pain and fear and uncover underlying sexual orientation that was always there. tl;dr: It is possible your therapist is correct. Some women who have been deeply emotionally abused do not feel safe around men, and unconsciously turn toward women. In these women, exploring and understanding the pain of the abuse may impact sexual attraction (but not orientation.) The same is more rare, but sometimes occurs in men. This wouldn't be a reason to dump your therapist unless your therapist is pushing this idea. If it is simply being offered as a place for exploration, and your therapist seems otherwise competent, I wouldn't see any immediate need to switch. Joe Kort, Ph.D has written some about this phenomena in gay men in his book "Ten Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Find Real Love" I know I've seen similar writings about women (from credible sources) but I can't, offhand, remember the citations.
Thank you, that was actually a very interesting answer.:icon_bigg And my therapist WAS just suggesting this as one possible theory, she didn't go like: oh, you're just gay because... I just found it an interesting topic and to me personally it does make a little bit of sense. And oh... to all the others who gave out their POV: thanks.:icon_bigg I always enjoy reading about different people's perspectives on one theory.
Personally, I don't think abuse of any kind has anything to do with sexuality, but it can shape behavior. For example, if a bi woman was raped by a man, her behavior would change to the extent that she is now uncomfortable being with men, and finds it harder to be intimate with them. She may start leaning more toward women. But usually she would still desire men deep down, she just wouldn't be able to handle relationships with them anymore. A lesbian on the other hand never desires to be with men despite any history. I have been emotionally abused by a lot of people as well, but every single one of those abusers I had was a woman (including several exes) yet I am still exclusively attracted to women. So really it depends on the circumstances.
My counselor suggested the same thing about my gender identity (although I wasn't abused by one parent, more like I just don't get along with her). It's so confusing.
I think your therapist is wrong. I distrust much of this kind of theories because I feel that therapists and the like are eager to search for a "logical" explanation instead of accepting what is innate and natural. Remember that many times they see the patients as cash, they do not make great efforts to understand our emotions and experiences. It doesn't help that the people that I know in the psychologycal field have rather poor honesty and too much hypocrisy. In my case I am sure being gay is completely innate, and I have no problem with that.
Psychodynamic perspectives provide theories, but they certainly don't provide one hundre percent truths! After all, it is the oldest form of counselling, which had a background of blaming women who were rape victims as, "imagining" it and jumping to conclusions of women being neurotic and hysterical compared to men, leading electro shock therapy and asylums! Although psychodynamic perspectives do have their place in modern psychology, the truth of the matter is almost everyone will agree a humanistic perspective is the most important. Basically, the belief that what you think is the problem, is the problem and that empathy between two people is the most important thing to feeling better. So, what I will say is, do you feel that there is some truth to it? If so, then sure! Maybe its true. Bear in mind though, that whole thing of lesbians having affection for women because of terrible father figures has been a contentious and ill-used conclusion used to deny the sexuality from ever existing. I guess, just take his words with a grain of salt, and if you feel invalidated by his words, you know it's not true . If it makes you more sure of my words, I have a degree in psychology.
Hey, nice to hear different opinions from you all. I personally believe the attraction I feel towards individuals, is guided by an even mix of nature and nurture. I'm very into psychology, more so than into the " real" sciences, so maybe that's why. I'm not claiming anyone to be wrong. I could be wrong. I'm just saying this might apply to me, as a person.
