When Two Foreigners Meet: The Relational Matrix of Shame and Internalized Homophobia

Abstract

When encounters with homophobia are so strongly borne throughout one's existence, the cultural, social, and institutional interdictions against one's very being become internalized, and the process of dehumanization continues from within. This article is built on the premise that the trauma surrounding the individual's early sense of “foreignness” necessitates a process of dissociation in which the segregation of self-states, along with shame and guilt, perpetuate internalized stigma and sever empathic connections. Using Bromberg's (1996) concept of dissociation, an extended clinical example is provided to illustrate the way in which my patient's dissociative switch in self-states led to a dissociated homophobic reaction in his gay therapist, and how empathy resulted from the discovery of shame-filled affective states arising out of the intersubjective experience of shame and homophobia in the clinical situation

Keywords:

• homophobia
• dehumanization
• self-states
• dissociation
• shame
• intersubjective

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shelley L. Heusser

Shelley L. Heusser, M.A., works as a clinical psychologist in Tambo Memorial Hospital, Johannesburg, serving the community mental health needs of a diverse South African population. He also practices and supervises in Johannesburg on a part-time basis. He is a member of the Gauteng Alliance for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity in Johannesburg, Gauteng.