Outside Looking in: Gay Male Psychotherapists Making Meaning at the Intersection of Identity

A gay identity offers a perspective outside heteronormative narratives characterized by exclusion as well as a radical position of difference. Being a psychotherapist, too, holds complex implications for identity. This paper explores the lived experience of gay male psychotherapists, a group whose voice is seldom heard. Based on interviews with six White South African gay male psychotherapists, a narrative analysis explores their experience of identity and voice. This paper highlights the ways in which the journey to occupying oneself as gay and the journey of becoming a therapist are intertwined. The complex power relations evoked in this experience are explored, and the position of the gay male therapist as "outside looking in" is interrogated as a position of marginality that both excludes and provides a unique vantage point from which to challenge exclusion.