ABSTRACT
In my misguided zeal to help Z. actualize his career and to solidify his relationship with his girlfriend, my interpretive schema accented the immaturity of his sexual interests, maintaining his archaic girly-boy identiŠcation with his mother and avoiding the “stronger” and more masculine emphasis on career and commitment to this, in my mind, wonderfully ªexible young woman. Even if I had been largely on target with my insight in linking history to present, the more salient message this sensitive man heard from me was to control his cross-dressing distractions and to settle down to a promising career and a monogamous relationship with this girlfriend, with whom I was so taken. In his charming and seductive way Z. quit therapy for “practical” reasons, never challenging me for my egregiously unwarranted impositions on elements of a life that he desired. He probably even knew that it was not his cross-dressing per se that was blocking his career and his relationship, and that I was too threatened personally by his sexual tastes and his feminine sides to help him adequately integrate this into his love life and work life. I suspect that Z. even knew that the sports metaphors we so frequently spoke in and my interest in his career were reassuring to my own counter-identiŠcations with my own infantilizing mother, and that my ambitions for him were as much countertransference based as anything else. I did Z. a great disservice and beneŠted a great deal more from him than he did from me. Z. helped teach me how self-serving it usually is to make so-called clinical judgments about others’ nonnormative sexuality, including the moral value of monogamy and sexual Šdelity as a universal ideal for all individuals.
