Isay said that his new book has stirred up some controversy because he argues that gay couples who tolerate sexual adventures outside the partnership may do so out of an unconscious fear of closeness rather than a sense of liberation from traditional heterosexual strictures. His 1996 book, Becoming Gay, outlines the ways in which gay teenagers and adults develop self-acceptance. He was the first openly gay member of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Isay published his first book, Being Homosexual: Gay Men and Their Development, in 1989, at a time when he was coming out. A clinical professor at Weill Medical College of Cornell University and a faculty member at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, Isay draws upon his experience as a Manhattan psychotherapist with mostly gay clients. In a book accessible to nontherapists and illustrated with case studies, Isay shows how gay men can recover from childhood wounds and learn to sustain committed monogamous partnerships. In his new book, Commitment and Healing: Gay Men and the Need for Romantic Love, Isay describes how therapy can help provide gay men with insight into the effects of childhood influences on the capacity to commit to a partner. Many gay men seek affirmation not through an enduring, loving relationship, he said, but in cultivating large networks of friends, pursuing transient sexual liaisons, focusing on professional success and creating flawlessly appointed environments for themselves. “Boys may grow up mistrusting the love of another person and will find many other ways of finding the self-esteem enhancement that they missed in childhood,” said Isay.
Isay believes that these dynamics can prevent adult gay men from forming long-term romantic bonds. Mothers who enjoy the sensitivity and shared interests of gay sons may lean too much on them, using them to fulfill their unmet emotional needs. He believes that the social acceptance of homosexuality “has not filtered down to the way homosexual boys are raised.” Fathers tend to criticize or shun sons who dislike rough sports, play with dolls or otherwise prefer stereotypically feminine pursuits. The main, though not the only, source of their distress, he thinks, lies in the ways their parents treated them as children. Many gay men are still suffering, however, said Isay. “There’s much more social acceptance than there was 20 or 30 years ago,” said psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Richard A.
Homosexuality has not been considered pathological by mainstream psychiatry since the 1970s, and in the years that followed, gay couples have begun to acknowledge their partnerships publicly. The night in June 1969 that gay men fought police raiding the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village marked the beginning of wider acceptance of male homosexuals.
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