ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to raise awareness of the clinical needs of same-sex couples as a means of increasing sensitivity and responsiveness when engaging psychotherapeutically with lesbians and gay men presenting for therapy. It deals with a brief consideration of the ways in which the psychoanalytic profession is responding to the challenges of theory and practice with lesbians and gay men. Historically, psychoanalytically informed practitioners have obscured the lives of lesbians and gay men in the language of pathology, immaturity, and immorality. Therapists working with lesbian and gay couples must also be alive to the impact of gender and the ways in which this consciously and unconsciously affects the couple dynamic. Development in thinking about same-sex couples within the field of psychoanalysis is still very much in its infancy. A. D'Ercole emphasises the importance in clinical work with same-sex couples of attending to internalised experiences relating to feelings of difference.
