Gay Affirmative Psychotherapy With Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Individuals: Implications for Contemporary Psychotherapy Research
concerning this article should be addressed to Steven D. Johnson, Department of Psychiatry, University of Kentucky, 245 Fountain Court, Lexington, KY 40509. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected].
Sincere thanks to James J. Clark, whose encouragement and scholarly critic were invaluable in developing this manuscript.
Abstract
Although a fair amount has been written about gay affirmative psychotherapy, there has not been a clear consensus on what actually constitutes gay affirmative therapy. Because there are no real theoretical framework, operational definitions, or outcome measures, pychotherapists are left unsure about how to incorporate it into their practice and researchers are unsure how best to investigate it. This article offers recommendations to identify gay affirmative therapy as a culturally competent approach for working with lesbian, gay, and bisexual clients and offers future research directions including how to utilize the “coming out” narrative in gay affirmative therapy.
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