ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the impact of the sexual overstimulation of everyday life on development, symptom formation, adult sexual adaptation, and psychoanalytic treatment with some homosexual men. It describes the everyday nature of this overstimulation during the childhood and adolescence of some gay men both as a way of emphasizing its common and cumulative effects in the lives of these individuals. The chapter presents the typical countertransference reactions to the type of overstimulation with a detailed case illustration. It demonstrates with a dramatic clinical vignette the complexity of recognizing and making effective use of commonly occurring countertransference reactions to the varieties of overstimulating transferences. The chapter looks at the adolescent longing of some homosexual boys for heterosexual boys so frequently reported in the analyses and psychotherapies of gay men. The homosexually inclined child or adolescent may be repeatedly overstimulated by gender pairings that paradoxically were meant to protect against just such a risk.
