Malcolm Cross & Franz Epting. Journal of Constructivist Psychology. Volume 18, Issue 1. 2005.
Labeling has individual, social and political implications that are neither all good nor all bad, nor do those implications exert the same influence on all individuals, with the same effect. Labels can obliterate or wipe out possibilities and crush creativity. They may also provide a ready-made solution, option, or answer to a puzzling question. Labels can become platforms from which to make new meaning, in this sense acting as a launching ground for creativity, defining a new, unique, and whole self.
Set firmly in the applied context of therapeutic work with gay clients we seek to explore individual influences on self as a consequence of claiming a homosexual identity. On this occasion we will restrict ourselves to speaking about the experiences of homosexual men. We begin by providing a brief account of the intersection of individual, social, and political influences that may act as a prompt for what we have described as the individual’s experience of self-obliteration, self-definition or self-integration arising from the adoption of a homosexual identity. Our discussion focuses primarily on the processes of individual meaning making where the consequences of claiming a homosexual identity range from obliteration to the involvement and integration of self. Table 1 illustrates these individual, social, and political influences on homosexual identity and is elaborated by a brief overview of the political and social influences on claiming a homosexual identity from a personal construct perspective. The shaded section of Table 1 indicates the area that constitutes the primary focus of the present article, that of the diverse possibilities arising from of individual meaning making.
| Table 1. The individual, social, and political influences on a homosexual identity. | |||
| Self-Obliteration | Self-Definition | Self-Integration | |
| Political | Experience of Anti-homosexual legislation, discrimination | Sanction of a discrete range of lifestyle options (e.g., pension provision) | Libertarian support for the notion of ethical desire. Achievement of the irrelevance of sexual orientation in considerations of human rights |
| Social | Preemptive, stereotypical or prejudicial construing of homosexuality | Seize hold / take permission to colonize lifestyle choices | + Expectations of difference, human diversity |
| – Choose from a range of lifestyle options derived primarily from previously authored, observable, characteristics. | Initial uncertainty, no ready made paths/ answers. | ||
| Individual | Internalized homophobia Authentic/Ideal self is seen at odds with personal construction (which is socially anchored) of homosexuality. | Self defined through identification with a range of homosexually aligned characteristics, behaviors, and lifestyle choices. Often, but not exclusively fore-grounding sexuality. | Emancipation from a limited range of self-defining characteristics, behaviors and lifestyle choices. Often, but not entirely back-grounding sexuality. |
Politics and Claiming a Homosexual Identity
Rowe (1991) argued that power was usually represented as position, wealth, and military strength, but this was not what power ultimately is. Power in her view was the right to define reality. In particular, Rowe (1991,p.29) asserted that power was “the ability to get other people to accept your definition of reality.” In other words, power was the ability to have an impact on the other’s construction of reality. This analysis suggests that we need to “understand the differences between what we can and what we cannot choose. It provides a way to begin to recognize those things that are constructed as possessing certain influence, as if they were given in the world, when in fact they were not” (Epting et al., 1996, pp. 316-317). This notion of power commonly invokes associations with the Foucaultian utilization of the concept as a unit of analysis (Foucault, 1977). This is not our intention here; rather we use the term power to describe the individual’s propensity to make meanings that propel one forward, in this way taking up the arguments put forward by Rowe (1991).
From a personal construct perspective, membership in a subcultural group is one way of affirming parts of us that are different from the shared meanings of the broader culture. Leitner, Begley, & Faidley (1996) suggest that these groups, which are also socially constructed, can validate meanings ignored by the larger culture. In so doing, they suggest, such groups are a vital step in the transition of the larger culture toward one that affirms more personal meanings. Leitner et al. (1996) propose that there are at least three ways in which this transition can be understood: (a) the affirmation of parts of our uniqueness; (2) contrast reconstructionthe shift from the emergent or dominant pole of the contrast (heterosexual, in the case of heterosexual versus homosexual) to the opposite pole (homosexual); and (3) the demand for social validation and reintegration into the larger culture. In this sense, a further task of the therapist, in addition to the otherwise exclusively intraindividual focus, is to support the development of socio-sexual repertories and multiple meanings that act as possibilities rather than prescriptions.
Social Influences on Claiming a Homosexual Identity
The nature of knowing in Personal Construct Psychology has been aligned with divergent positions, in particular those of critical realism and radical constructivism (Raskin, 2001). Although we acknowledge that Kelly was less than clear on his position and recognize some have argued that he wanted it both ways (Stevens, 1998), we take a critical realist position in interpreting the work of Kelly for the purposes of this dialogue. Therefore, in the social context, we do not deny the existence of social norms and influences; however, we do not accept the pure, causative or perfect relationship between influence and effect. Rather the individual is charged with the responsibility and imbued with the agency with which to make meaning of the event. This emphasis on constructive man was created deliberately by Kelly in order to contrast with the popular psychology of the time, that of “reactive man” (Landfield, 1977).
Kelly challenged us to make inferences about valuing and thinking man and provided us with a theory, sufficiently abstract, within which to encompass a variety of life orientations, values and selves. (Landfield, 1977, p. 132)
This, of course, suggests that social events are similar to the often-cited realist’s “brick wall.” Discrimination in the workplace and homophobic violence has real impact, however the psychological implications of these are largely negotiable and unique to the individual. Indeed, as Epting et al. (1996) suggest, this position in no way diminishes the fact that social conditions can have a very significant effect on a person’s life. PCP however imbues the person with the capacity to exercise a transcendent consciousness in order to create a reality other than the one presented (Epting et al., 1996).
The gay community has appropriated a range of visible social stereotypes, with the consequence of furnishing a habitable context and further reifying the gay vs. straight dimension, thus producing what Simpson (1999) describes as the prevailing gay orthodoxies. Both physical and subcultural, the infrastructure of a “friendlier quarter” provides the reassurance and anticipatory certainty that is so central to intransient and evolutionary meaning making.
The Implications of Labelling for the Individual
The construction of self as homosexual may be a prompt for the experience of despair, affirmation, or the elaboration of the individual. These varied experiences are attributable to the unique construction of homosexuality by the individual and the intersection of this construction with the individual’s values or what Kellian’s refer to as “core constructs.”
Thinking, feeling and/or acting homosexual may validate who we are at a deep and personal level; equally it may stand at odds and in conflict with who we perceive ourselves to be. The elements belonging under the rubric of homosexuality may be those events that take place within the individual, outside the individual in the customs and practices of their context (social), or on the statutes, case, or common law that govern (political). The implications of owning a homosexual identity may be positive or negative, depending on the consistency of this identity status with an individual’s personal notion of their ideal self. We propose three broad classifications that provide a framework within which the stifling and elaborative implications of claiming a homosexual identity may be explored. In the section to follow, we seek to outline three distinct possibilities developed through applying personal construct psychology to clinical practice. We describe these psychological possibilities using the terms self-obliteration, self-definition, and self-integration.
Self-Obliteration
Homosexuality, as defined and understood by an individual, may be at odds with the core values or constructs that principally define who that person is. In such cases, thinking, feeling, and/or behaving as a homosexual (as defined by the individual) stands in contrast to how he perceives himself. Thus, two or more core values are said to be in conflict. For some, tragically, it is not possible to be themselves and gay, and if gayness is perceived as undeniable then self is lost, as in the case in the most profound loss of self: suicide. As Kelly (1991) said, “If a man commits suicide, one can best understand that act only by knowing what he conceived to be the practical alternative to suicide” (p. 384). The choice corollary of PCP is of relevance here, as it implies that people choose alternatives that offer the greatest possibility for the extension and definition of their construct system. So it is a decision made in the context of who he is, rather than who he may become, that is likely to win out. Self-obliteration here may be seen, paradoxically, as a strategy for maintaining the integrity of self, where the gay man can see no way in which he can be authentically himself and gay.
Preemptive, tight and inflexible constructions of homosexuality may promote absolutistic assumptions that dictate the implications of being gay. For this individual the imagined consequences of being a homosexual are concrete and inescapable, where event (thinking, feeling, behaving homosexually) are inseparable from meaning. Something of this conflict is reflected in the words of a former client whom we shall call Anthony.
To be a homosexual is to be despised, ostracized and looked upon as a pervert. I couldn’t live my life in fear of being exposed.
Therapists working with gay men who experience conflict between their ideal selves and a homosexual selves will work to explicate the core values that conflict with the aim of identifying sources of leverage in terms of how the implications of homosexuality are perceived.
Fundamental to personal construct psychology is the distinction between events in the world and the unique, individual meaning we attach to these events. In particular, Kelly (1991) draws upon what he describes as a distinction between “commonality” and “sociality,” with commonality referring to the use of shared language or symbols to present the outline of events. Commonality thus allows us to gain some insight into “what” the person sees. Sociality, in contrast, is the process of understanding “how” the person sees the world. It is not merely a naming exercise, it is an elaborative, meaning making process, based on the assumption that everyone sees his or her world uniquely. What makes these personal construct corollaries relevant to the current discussion is the challenge of understanding the intersection between socially available and personal meanings, particularly where gay men may share the same language and engage in similar activities but may make radically different sense of their pursuits (Cross 2001).
In the therapeutic application of PCP there is an important distinction between acknowledging a client’s views and attesting to their truth. Kelly (1991) warned of the potentially stifling implications of the over use of support and reassurance in therapy. Interventions which imply the client is right to see the world in the way they do are likely to have the effect of comforting the client in the short term, however, they may stifle change in the long term. If therapy is to be generative, then it must do more than just accept, it must be prepared to be critical and facilitative of the process of unique, rather than socially promoted meaning making.
Validating the perspective of your client, where that perspective and its implications are the cause of their distress, is obviously problematic. Epting & Raskin (1998) speak of the limiting implications of the use of the classifications of homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual, thus reminding us that it may be prudent to acknowledge that such categorical thinking is not the exclusive purview of the dominant majority. Indeed, those authors argue that, while current categories of sexual identity and gender identity can often serve useful purposes politically and socially, people need not be enslaved by these categories in ways that limit forays into personal meaning and self-construction. Being gay may be intolerable and unacceptable to individuals as a consequence of the meaning they manufacture in order to understand and manage their world.
Indeed Kelly had much to say that is relevant to the therapist here. In “The Psychology of the Unknown,” Kelly (1977) highlights the distinction between understanding and adopting a client’s view. The gay man for example, may be at a loss to explain his experience of same sex attraction in a world that promotes opposite sex attraction, and he may go so far as to regard himself as the unwitting victim of psychodynamics or biology. But that does not mean that as therapists we should limit ourselves to the same terms he uses. As Kelly (1977) said:
our job is to understand his experience in general, not merely to simulate it in particular. To do this with any perspicacity we must devise our own constructions. Our constructs must enable us to subsume his constructs, not merely simulate them. If he thinks in terms of psychodynamics, that is something we ought to understand and appreciate. But it is not necessary for us to resort to psychodynamic explanations ourselves in order to understand his construct of “psychodynamics.” (1977, p. 3)
Therapists are thus charged with the responsibility of understanding and appreciating the individual, social, and political influences on indi-vidual’s unique understanding of homosexuality while not surrendering to this view as the only personal truth possible.
Self-Definition
Self may be defined through identification with a range of homosexually aligned characteristics, behaviors and lifestyle choices. Unity, as Landfield (1977) describes it, provides the comfortable context within which meaning is stabilized, whilst contrast, on the other hand
performs a dual function of providing a context for change in that unity as well as a dimensional framework with which one may com-prehend his particular position. (p. 131)
In the process of claiming a homosexual identity, sexuality is often foregrounded as the main marker of self. Weeks (1985) has often been reported as suggesting that sexologists created the homosexual through the categorization of sexuality. Building upon this argument Harrison (2000) suggests that prior to this classification “gay people expressed their sexuality and formed gay relationships but did not necessarily construct their whole life around their sexual orientation” (p. 39). Citing DeCecco and Elia (1993), Harrison (2000) asserts that, more recently, a gay identity and subculture has emerged due to a predominant liberal ideology and social constructionist paradigm. Gay communities have developed consisting of pubs, clubs, restaurants, clothes shops, hairdressers, taxi services and newspapers, and this infrastructure provides a sense of belonging and security and encourages a gay identity (Harrison, 2000).
Gay identification, subsequent to feelings of alienation and estrange-ment from mainstream heterosexual life style choices, can give rise to feelings of belonging. Options associated with gay lifestyles can provide a sense of “home coming” afforded by the opportunity to step into a ready-made template. For the gay-identified man this off-the-peg lifestyle, that is at once accessible and fits so much more comfortably that the conventions of desire entertained by the heterosexual majority, can have significant validational and explanatory power. A former client, whom we have called Trevor, said the following, which resonated with this notion.
When I moved to [the city] I was scared I’d be lonely and out of my depth, but I’ll never forget the first time I walked down [that street] and everywhere I looked everything was gay. I felt welcome, like this was my home. All that without speaking to a soul.
Kelly (1977) does provide some words of caution, relevant to the wholesale adoption of externally manufactured constructions. He suggests that if we are to talk psychologically about any subject matter at all we cannot allow ourselves to rely upon “simulative” terms alone. Rather he advocates that we must use “constructive” terms (Kelly, 1977). When we use such terms, Kelly (1977) suggests that we are reminded and encouraged to hold ourselves, not the objects, firmly responsible. So, even though our only access to events is through the psychological devices we create for looking at them, it is always proper to raise pointed questions about which is which, and about the appropriateness of our personal constructs to their intended objects (Kelly, 1977). “Gay,” for example, may hold a very important position in one’s construct systemas it does for many clients. It may, however, be fitting for us to ask our clients if all they regard as “gay” might not be understood in any other way. In particular, I am mindful of clients who tend to construe their homosexuality preemptively. That is, once they have identified themselves as gay, they may consign themselves to a limited set of possibilities, as Tony, a former client did when he said, “I will never have children and I resent that I will never be a father.”
The unintended consequence of privileging of sexual orientation as the primary marker of identity is to risk bleaching the uniqueness and diversity that characterizes the person in personal construct psychology (Kelly, 1991). PCP would expect that sex means different things to different people (Burr & Butt, 1996). Self-definition through the adop-tion of a ready-made homosexual identity may run the risk of stifling the plurality of meaning making, forcing those who “sign-up” to subscribe to commonality and rhetoric and ignore individual divergence from the popular concomitants of homosexuality.
Self-Integration
Self-integration, within the possibilities outlined thus far, stands at the apex of creativity. It is the sense of self that is consistent with core values that make us who we are. It would seem now, more than ever, Miller Mair’s (1977) metaphors of “adventure,” “exploration,” and “quest” capture something of the challenge facing those who seek to sexually express themselves in ways that are uncommon or outside the ordinary. They reflect what can be understood to be at the core of Kelly’s (1991) psychology of personal constructs. Imbued in his psychology was an invitation to adventure and a challenge to choose. As Mair (1977) reminds us, Kelly took the position that we were not bound by our conditioning, nor by our family dynamics, nor delineated completely by our heredity, unless we choose so to be. A former client, whom we have called Bryan said, in the context of a final session of therapy something that eloquently represents this spirit.
I am gay, and I don’t really think I could ever not be gay, but there is more to me than that. I imagine points in my life, and I am a little embarrassed that I thought I knew the answer back then. Now, I think that I will go on acting like I know the answer, but secretly I’m going to reserve the right to change my mind.
A personal definition of homosexuality that is necessarily unique, in order to be consistent with one’s sense of self, is required for self-integration. Therapists can play an important role in assisting their clients entertain positive and flexible constructions of what it means to be gay so long as they are elaborative and not restricted to ready made constructions, however popular or benign they may at first appear.
Conclusion
When affirming something we make it solid, and we make it real. Its consequence is to benchmark, set a standard, or create the illusion of certainty. Therapeutic affirmation should be applied judiciously and always at the level of possibility if we are not to risk prescription and ultimately disenfranchising those we seek to assist. Within a social context that might promote self-obliteration, the ready made subcultural platform of self-definition, assembled from a manufactured infrastructure that defines alternative possibilities, self-integration arises from the courage to look beyond the obvious and create. In doing so, individuals take responsibility for who they are, owning agency and negotiating the authentic expression of self across individual, social, and political contexts.
Therapists face significant challenge when they deviate from content free classifications of psychological functioning (Kelly, 1977). Privileging one account of experience and consequently confusing the representation of events with the construction of them is potentially stifling. At best, concretely affirmative interventions are bound to be ill fitting on some level, and at worst they may serve to circumvent the creative potential of human meaning making and expression.