ABSTRACT
Efforts to explain the phenomenon of cruising have periodically appeared in the psychoanalytic literature. As a consequence, analytic authors have approached cruising as an activity unique to men seeking sex with other men. This chapter focuses on the clinical utility of cruising when the patient brings the activity into the treatment relationship. It explores the phenomenon of cruising with the idea that the self can become destabilized, the person on some deeper level feels lost, and manifestly feels an acute need to connect with another person. Cruising is a wide-ranging phenomenon—from looking at pornography, or passersby, or performers that stimulate a private sexual reverie, to longing for an admiring response from someone, to an intense desire for a sexual encounter. Cruising takes many forms, occurs in many contexts, can have many meanings or motivations, and can involve a wide variety of self states and selfobject needs or longings.
