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from Clinical/Therapeutic Issues
Attachment Loss and Grief Work
in Reparative Therapy
By Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.
The gender-identity phase of development is marked by a surge of "ambition" to achieve gender competence. When there is a failure in this phase of development, a core identity injury results. Grief work helps the client overcome the injury.
Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D. |
The triadic narcissistic family offers a useful model for understanding male
homosexuality and its foundation in a failure of attachment to the same-sex
parent. The narcissistic family is not found in the backgrounds of all same-sex
attracted (SSA) men; however, we often see evidence of it in our clinical work
with men seeking to overcome SSA.
In normal families, children know they are important, and they sense their needs
and feelings as important to their parents. But rather than providing an
understanding, accurately attuned, and supportive emotional environment for the
son's developing masculine self, the narcissistic parents, as a parental team,
systematically "fail to see" the boy as a gendered individual person.
"Shaming" Masculinity vs. "Failing to Elicit" It
Recent biological research suggests that some boys have experienced a biological
developmental "accident" in which their developing brain was never completely
masculinized while they were still in utero. When such children reach the
gender-identity phase of about two years old, the "surge of ambition" to achieve
masculine competency will be much weaker than that of the typical boy. Such a
boy may fail to develop a normal masculine gender identity if the parents do not
actively elicit it from him. Such parents did not actively "shame" the son for
his strivings but simply failed to be attuned to the boy's special need for
active support in calling forth his true, gendered nature.
The Problem of Malattunement. In this family, through distinctly
different interactions with each parent, the boy experiences parental
malattunement in his efforts to acquire his masculine self-identity. Within
the narcissistic family the child must be "for" the parents, i.e. "the parental
team." The malattunement he most often experienced was through being
ignored/belittled by father, and manipulated into taking on the role of intimate
companion to mother.
There may be anger against the self as a defense against his own weakness and
inability to break away from the mother to acquire a distinct masculine
identity. In addition to that anger against the self, the child may have been
made to feel bad about his feeling sad. "You're upsetting everybody else."
"There's no reason to be unhappy and you have nothing to complain about."
Within this narcissistic family structure, the boy's unsuccessful attempts at
gender actualization result in an attachment loss. Together, the parents evoked
an abandonment-annihilation trauma within the boy for which now, as a man, he
must grieve. This is the core trauma which has led to such a man's same-sex
attraction in adulthood.
The Boy's Temperament as a Key Factor
Temperament is a key factor in the failure to gender-identify. Another boy who
was less temperamentally sensitive -- perhaps even this boy's own brother who
may have been more outgoing, emotionally resilient, and assertive-- would
likely push harder and be more persistent in seeking his father's attention,
making it less easy for the father to detach from him. By the same token, an
assertive and outgoing boy often has more in common with the father and he will
be actively sought out by the father. The assertive-resilient boy will also be
less likely to form an over-intimacy with the mother and to seek out her
sheltering protections as a means of avoiding the masculine challenge.
Thus, it is the emotionally vulnerable boy-- sensitive, intuitive, sociable,
gentle, easily hurt-- who is most likely to incur a gender-identity injury and
to give up the masculine challenge. This boy needed special help to leave the
comfortable sphere of the mother; and perhaps his father did not actively injure
him, but simply failed to do the essential job-- essential for this
particular boy-- of actively calling forth his true masculine nature.
Attachment Loss and Shame
Clients express not only a sense of gender deficit, but a deeper, not easily
articulated sense of loss and emptiness. Various men have tried to describe it
in their own way. It is that despairing place that is the source of homosexual
impulse. It is also the source of the client's deepest resistance to treatment.
The developmental sequence is first attachment loss, then gender deficit. If
homosexuality is a form of attachment loss, then the question becomes; "Why do
some children who experience insecure attachment eventually adapt to the loss,
while other children do not, and develop maladaptive defenses against it?" To
begin to answer this question requires, first of all, the understanding that the
child's defense is not homosexuality per se, but a gender-identity deficit-
which he only later unconsciously seeks to "repair" through homosexual
enactment.
Said one client:
"When I went into the gay porn sites, as soon as
I got started, I realized how depressed I had been.
I realized, too, that I knew I was depressed but was
avoiding doing anything about it."
"The power of gay porn images reflects my own inadequacy. The
power of the image is not what he is, but what I am
not. And I can go pursue the distraction of what he
is, or confront the painful reality of what I am not."
The gender-identity phase, like all other phases of the child's development, is
marked by a surge of "ambition" to achieve a particular competence. Along with
this biologically driven "ambition" comes a narcissistic investment in the
outcome. When there is a failure in that phase of development, there is a
vulnerability to shame. Thus, this understanding of the homosexual condition
sees not just a gender-identity deficit, but also a core identity injury which
brings us to the use of grief work.
The person with a homosexual problem will exhibit psychological features
commonly found in any client who has become stuck in pathological grief. Those
include excessive dependency upon others for self-esteem, emotional maladaption,
thoughts of suicide, instability and insecurity, and difficulty in establishing
and maintaining long-term intimate relationships. These symptoms are a defense
against mourning the loss of authentic attachment to both parents. Thus it
ironic that declaring himself "gay" is a defense against profound, underlying
sadness.
Consequently, the therapist will attempt to offer a "corrective experience";
i.e., serving as the good parent by not punishing-- but hearing, understanding
and even valuing the experience of grief. The therapist must also recognize and
interpret the client's primary defense, which is the client's anticipation of
being shamed for feeling his loss. This is the essential function of shame-- to
defend against grief. It is easier to blame himself (and spend the rest of life
punishing himself for not feeling loved) than to face the profound reality of
loss of the parent's accurate attunement and the attachment he should have had
with his father. The client must openly share that fear of shame with the
therapist, in order to engage the opportunity for healing.
Deep grief work is often met with deeply entrenched resistance precisely because
of the intense pain resulting from the loss of attachment. The client literally
feels that if he expresses his pain, he will die. This primal feeling is
biologically rooted and evidenced in mammalian group behavior; after all, the
shunned, rejected member of the pack rightly senses that he will not be able to
survive alone.
It is not the pain, but the fear of the pain which is the greater source of
resistance in grief work. The desperate quality of this distress is
understandable since, from childhood, separation meant annihilation. Now, as an
adult, the client in therapy is still not secure in the belief that he can enter
that deep pain and survive. So it is not reliving the trauma but the fear of
reliving it which is the greatest source of resistance.
Grief work is approached through the client's own presenting complaints and his
self-identified conflicts. Those conflicts often involve the client's shame for
efforts at masculine assertion. When pursued, these conflicts often lead the
client into deeper emotions. Most often, sad and angry feelings will surface
when the client allows himself to fully feel the sadness and emptiness
associated with his attachment loss.
The next phase of therapy requires a meaningful integration of the loss. Now,
as an adult in therapy, the client with SSA can re-create a coherent narrative
-- namely, the making of meaning now, in the present, of his attachment losses
in the past.
Resolution means the client must decide to live in a realistic present, making
realistic plans for the future. He chooses to have a healthy perception of
reality with the people in his life today-- not needing them to be better than
they are. No longer is there the inarticulate sense of narcissistic entitlement
that others are obliged to compensate him for his past hurts.
This grief work is a humanizing process, in that it demands the abandonment of
narcissistic defenses against experiencing deep humility. The work of grief is
the back-and-forth tension between two inhibiting affects - shame and fear,
versus the other two core affects - sadness and anger.
Resolution necessitates the assimilation of the loss into one's personal schema,
one's worldview or personal narrative. That narrative requires a coherent
understanding of himself today. As the client faces his illusions and
distortions, he spontaneously expresses curiosity about his true identity. "Who
am I other than my false self?"
Resolution is the catalyst for personal growth, identity transformation, and the
establishment of new ways of relating. It means growing beyond emotional
isolation and chronic loneliness, and making a renewed investment in authentic
relatedness with people of both genders. Along with this greater capacity for
genuine intimacy, comes a diminishment of same-sex attraction's illusionary
power.
Reference
Nicolosi, J. (1991) Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality. N.J.: Jason Aronson.
Updated: 2 September 2008
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