News from Meier Clinics

     As a caring psychiatrist for the past thirty-three years, I have given compassionate care to many hundreds of men and women who have had struggles with their sexual identities and cravings. The roots of these struggles are complex and multifaceted, and too often we jump to simplistic causes and solutions. There are scores of reasons why my individual clients have developed struggles in those areas.
     Having said that, there are some very frequent and common pathways to these struggles that I have heard over and over again in my clients who share their personal struggles with me about their sexual identity issues and their particular sexual struggles that leave them still feeling empty inside.
     If I were to list scores of patterns and issues that have led to these struggles in my clients, number one on that long and complex list would still remain FATHER WOUNDS. Not all clients with these issues have "father wounds," and not all people with "father wounds" have sexual identity issues. Nevertheless, it is the most common source of emotional pain that comes up in private conversations with my open and honest clients who search for the sources of their pain, not so they can blame someone, but so they can take positive steps to compensate for the painful areas of emotional vacuum they may feel in the depths of their souls.

CASE STUDY
    Jim is a client of mine who is divorced, in his mid-forties, and is a very creative and successful advertising executive who owns and runs his own international company. He has been socially heterosexual his entire life, but has felt like a woman trapped in a man's body as long as he can remember. He dated girls in high school and married a young lady during his college years for social reasons. He loved her as a friend but pretended to love her romantically even though he never did. He tried to hide his identity issues altogether, but he had half a dozen homosexual relationships during his life - two before marriage, three during the marriage, and one after the divorce. None of the relationships lasted more than a few months. Jim felt almost certain each time that he had found his soul mate, only to face disillusionment afterwards on all six occasions, leaving him feeling lonely and empty inside. He found himself attracted each time to tall, muscular, musically inclined male lovers.
     When I asked Him about his entire life experiences from birth to present, it soon became apparent that Jim grew up with a wonderful, loving mother, and an absent father. His father, Jim Sr., was a tall, muscular, music minister at a large denominational church. Jim Sr. was a "churchaholic"- someone who goes to church so much that it makes God angry (for neglecting his family). Jim had two sisters, one older and one younger.
     Since most of our sexual identity is formed from ages two to six, Jim had only his Mom and sisters to identify with, for the most part, and so learned to think, feel, walk, and talk like his mother, even picking up her mannerisms and hand gestures. He became a woman trapped in a man's body.
      All humans, I believe, are born with natural vacuums that need to be filled with the love of a mother figure, a father figure, and God. Jim had a wonderful mother who loved him dearly, so his mother vacuum was quite adequately satisfied. But his father vacuum was left empty, resulting in Jim craving the attention of his father but seldom getting it. So Jim had a double whammy-a feminine sexual identity and a craving for his father's love to fill the hole in his soul.
     When his hormones surged in late junior high school, he naturally confused his father vacuum with sexual cravings, even though he never actually wanted male sexual encounters on a deep inner level. He found himself developing intense crushes from time to time on tall, muscular, musical males without having the slightest clue that these were spitting images of his absent father. He was searching for his father's love on a deep inner level, but confusing it with sexual desire. He had a total of six male lovers in his life, and all of them felt wonderful at the start but empty toward the end of each brief relationship.
     In therapy, I never told Jim that he had to change anything. I don't tell people what to do. I see my job as being a loving mirror to people, helping them see the truth about what is truly going on in their lives on an unconscious level. When people see the truth, the truth can set them free to find the only thing that ever brings true happiness anyway - loving and being loved, on an emotional level, by a few people who know all their secrets and love them anyway, and a loving relationship with their Heavenly Father.
     Jim always saw God as probably existing, but being off at a distance, not really caring much about Jim. I reminded Jim on more than one occasion that as we are growing up and learning to say our "Goodnight Prayers" as three or four year olds, we are actually thinking as we pray, "Dear heavenly version of my earthy father." Nearly eighty percent of our God concept comes from our parent images, especially that of our earthly father. Every single one of us, as humans, is prejudiced to some degree toward (or against) God. We not only think our Heavenly Father is very much like our earthly father, we also try to avoid looking at painful, repressed memories about our earthly fathers, often holding them up on a pedestal to avoid getting in touch with our rage toward them, and displace this rage to God instead, looking for reasons to reject God or at least keep Him at a safe distance.
     Jim came to our Day Program after going through the divorce of his one and only marriage, followed by a broken relationship with a male lover. He was very suicidal at the time, feeling hopeless, and feeling like God could never accept him - if there even was a God, which he doubted. People come to our Day Program to get seven hours-a-day, five days-a-week of intensive group and individual therapy, usually for about three weeks. We pack a year of therapy into that three-week period, digging for root problems and using Gestalt and other techniques to get individuals in touch with their root problems and repressed emotions. I see each patient daily to make adjustments to their medications if meds are needed to relieve their intense anxiety and sadness and insomnia. I also ask them about their childhoods and their dreams, which are often windows into their souls.
     Jim's individual therapist put an empty chair in front of Jim, after we all learned about his childhood and subsequent relationship encounters, and had Jim pretend his father was sitting in the chair. Then we had Jim look his "father" in the eye and tell him how he felt about his father seldom being there for Jim, bringing up multiple specific incidences of feeling let down or downright rejected by his father. Jim wept with grief and rage as he got in touch with his suppressed emotions, but then prayed for God to enable him to forgive his father, so his life would no longer be haunted and unconsciously determined by his codependency on his father and father substitutes. Jim forgave his father, and understood why he had developed his mother's personality traits and mannerisms and felt like a woman trapped in a man's body. Jim was encouraged to make a few intimate male friends who could accept him as he is, without confusing the friendship with sexual activities or manipulations. As Jim saw the truth and forgave his father, and himself, it became much easier to develop an intimate friendship with his Heavenly Father. Jim apologized to God for being so prejudiced against Him, thinking Him to be just like his father.
     In therapy, when men like Jim discover the truth about their emotional development, and work through their issues, especially father vacuum issues, and fill the voids they feel with non-sexual relationships, the urge to erroneously think sexual acts with other men are the solution to the problem diminish as time goes on and deep relationships grow that are not tainted by sexual confusion.
     Jim recovered from his lifelong bouts of depression, continued in outpatient therapy for a few more months, became active in an Exodus International Group where he bonded with other males with similar struggles, and continued to grow in his relationship with God. Eighteen months later, Jim fell in love naturally with a wonderful woman from his church, dated her for a year and then married her. He has now been happily married to her for three years and has a young one-year-old son, a son he spends lots of time with and gives plenty of hugs to.

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