Tejirian Edward - Male to Male

Male to Male

Sexual Feeling Across the Boundaries of Identity

HAWORTH Gay & Lesbian Studies

John P. De Cecco, PhD
Editor in Chief

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Sexual Feeling Across the Boundaries of Identity

Edward J. Tejirian, PhD

Published by

Harrington Park Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580

Transferred to Digital Printing 2010 by Routledge

270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

2000 by Edward J. Tejirian. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover design by Marylouise E. Doyle.

Cover photo 2000 Steven Zeeland/Seadogphoto.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tejirian, Edward J., 1935

Male to male : sexual feeling across the boundaries of identity / Edward J. Tejirian.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-56023-975-1 (hard : alk. paper)ISBN 1-56023-976-X (soft : alk. paper)

1. MenIdentity. 2. MenPsychology. 3. MenSexual behavior. 4. Homosexuality, Male. 5. Gender identity. I. Title

HQ1090 .T453 2000

305.31dc21

00-027137

Publishers Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent.

For Jeremy, Chris, and Scott

Edward Tejirian, PhD, has been a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist in private practice since 1976. Until 1997, he was Associate Professor in the School of Education, Department of Secondary Education and Youth Services at Queens College in New York.

Dr. Tejirian is Supervising Psychotherapist at the Institute of Human Identity, New York City, which offers psychotherapy to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered clients. He is also on the faculty of its postgraduate training program.

Dr. Tejirian is the author of Sexuality and the Devil: Symbols of Love, Power, and Fear in Male Psychology.

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

The words of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas
(From The Gnostic Gospels, by Elaine Pagels)

The case histories told as stories in this monumental work reflect the release of passion and turmoil and pain and love experienced by Dr. Tejirians students who were, or were hoping to become, secondary school teachers, as well as others. Ed gives us the accounts of his graduate students and others who had never allowed their sexual feelings and submerged dreams to surface. We also meet Clark and Seth and Kyle and Ron and Carl, who discovered that daydreams need not be night terrors. Throughout this work Ed examines the dry fears as well as the sexual pleasures we are all free to experience if we are encouraged and permitted to live open and joyous lives.

Professor Tejirian created this unique and sensitive view of human beings during almost thirty years of teaching in college as a clinical psychologist. He spent many hours beyond his classroom teaching, listening to and hearing the anxieties, pains, and conflicts his students (in our urban college) experienced while trying to live in the confinement of a frequently stifling code of acceptable behavior.

I was his colleague across the hall, sharing our confining offices with their poor lighting and dim hope. Eds classes reflected his struggle to dig deeper into the human psyche and to discover the layers of feeling and repressed libido alive in the hearts and spirits of these students who were, or were about to be, educators themselves. To teach, he felt, is to seek to know oneself; without self-knowledge one could never become the teacher of others.

Beyond all the self-examination, we grow to understand the love we can develop within ourselves and to express our shared experiences. Ed reveals that all teachers, artists, writers, and creative individuals must understand their own sexuality if they are to live expressive and nonjudgmental adult lives. To be thoughtful adults we must be sexually alive and openly warm in all our human relationships.

As Ed writes, our cultures guidelines seemed to add to [Michaels] difficulties. This work shows us that we need to loosen our cultures chains if we are to live in a more loving and less angry society. Barriers, masks, and hidden emotions create a culture of hypocrisy, subterfuge, and rage.