Joanic Masson

Unprotected Sex and Internalized Homophobia

During recent years in France, the number of HIV infections in the gay community has been constantly increasing. How can we explain the number of transmissions being still so prevalent? Since the arrival effective therapies, HIV may no longer be perceived as a fatal disease, and therefore it may have become trivialized. This paper will merge variables linked to homophobia and interiorized homophobia in order to bring a new insight in understanding to the motivations of gay men having non protected sex, whether it is systematic or episodic. Interiorized homophobia appears to be an essential element of the construction of the identity among gay men. A real “coping strategy”, it allows firstly a protection from the surrounding environment, but in a second step becomes harmful to the development of healthy self-esteem. Gay men partially construct their identity from elements such as heterosexism and insults targeting gays as feminine, submissive individuals. We suggest that unprotected sex between men answers a quest for identity. On the one hand, there is an act of virility with unprotected sex and transmission of seminal fluids and exposure to a risk, reinforcing the masculine side. On the other hand, we can see identification with homophobic rejection, and becoming the carrier of a contagious, chronic, rejected disease. It is in this status of rejection—the transfer from homophobia to the disease—that gay men may find themselves. This paper proposes to approach the phenomenon in a replay of previous contributions on this topic.

From the Influence of Traumas to Therapeutic Letting Go: The Contribution of Hypnosis and EMDR

Abstract The development of new psychotherapies such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EDMR) has led to numerous fresh approaches to both the treatment of trauma and to the understanding of underlying psychopathology. A unified view appears to be slowly emerging in an attempt to corroborate clinical practice with neurobiological data. This article attempts to demonstrate links between alternate psychotherapies by highlighting what appears to be an invariant among these approaches, namely “letting go.” This concept refers to a psycho-physical dynamic that combines psychological dissociation and reassociation, as well as the body’s vagotonic mechanisms. Following an explanation of this process, it is demonstrated how letting go can manifest itself physiologically and why this may be significant in the study of trauma.