Title:
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Entendidos : a study of emotional communication among gay men of Barcelona
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This thesis offers an analysis and a reconsideration of the
emotional needs and emotional-moral experiences of a group of
young gay men of Barcelona. It focuses in particular on: (1) their
growing up different in the context of their predominantly
heterosexual society, (2) their relationship' experiences of
intimacy, love and sex and (3) their friendship and socialisation
experiences both with other gay and/or straight men.
In depth interviews were carried out with a student
friendship-group of eight young gay men, using elements of
psychoanalytic interviewing, friendship as a relational emotional
paradigm and an adapted version of a voice-centred relational
method to deal with gay male experience. Findings suggest that:
(a) young homosexual men of Barcelona do not necessarily assume
the adoption of a gay identity (in the Anglo-Saxon way) as the only
way to make sense of their homosexual emotional needs nor do
their way of speaking and sharing their emotional experiences
assume a linear, straightforward discourse to articulate their
emotional needs and homosexual experience; (b) the cultural
specificity of emotional development should be fully acknowledged
and incorporated into the structure of psychoanalytic practice,
instead of assuming clinical competence to deal with gay men by
simply framing their experience according to heterosexual
assumptions and paradigms on male emotional development, and,
(c) that there is needed further sensitivity and awareness of the
cultural specificity of male homosexual experiences that
incorporates issues of identity, emotional needs, love, intimacy,
sexuality and morality within current sociological research on gay
experience, instead of reducing gay experience to mere discourse or
rational narratives.
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