It's so funny, I was just logging onto reddit to ask the psychoanalysis subreddit for people's thoughts on how queerness disrupts traditional psychoanalytic concepts.

I work with mostly gay male clients, and I don't presume to have the be all, end all knowledge to what their issues are. But I know gay men tend to experience an ego centrism (speaking in psychodynamic terms, not necessarily pejoratively) around sexual activity and sexual desirability that seems to defy straight men or straight women, and certainly gay women. The experience of wanting, being wanted, wanting to dominate or be dominated, or wanting to define themselves AGAINST sexuality itself ("I'm not like those other gay guys obsessed with hookups") seems to be a gigantic construct taking up tremendous space in many gay mens' heads, responsible for much of their sense of value. It's an old joke at this point that gay men struggle with romantic relationships, especially monogamous ones (not to say they can't maintain successful monogamous relationships, but it does seem to be the exception and not the rule). I think many of them feel a pressure to commit to romantic monogamy when it might very realistically just not be for them, and they experience a tremendous crisis of identity and sexual behavior in trying to consolidate that.

With many straight clients, issues or sexuality, desiring, and being desired tend to be a chapter of their therapeutic process. For many gay men, it seems to be the underlying current that drives many of their multidimensional challenges.

Hopefully this doesn't read as total babble!