The Handbook of Systemic Family Therapy, Set by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
Published: 2020-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

Coming out models

When someone realizes they are not heterosexual in a heteronormative culture, they have the same identity development tasks as all human beings, but they are attempting to accomplish these tasks at a severe disadvantage in families, communities, and wider cultures that stigmatize them and often fail to acknowledge their existence. This creates additional developmental pressures and tasks that heterosexual people do not endure. Beginning in the 1970s, researchers, educators, and therapists developed a variety of conceptual models designed to describe the internal experience of LGBTQI people as they negotiated the cultural realities around them. The process of “coming out” to oneself and others as not heterosexual has been theorized as a series of stages by various scholars (Bilodeau & Renn, 2005; Cass 1979, 1984; Coleman, 1981; Troiden, 1989). Of these models of gay and lesbian identity formation, Cass's (1979, 1984) model integrates many of the themes of the others, has stood the test of time well, and is most often referenced. Cass's model begins with the stage of identity confusion, when youth are socialized to expect to have opposite gender sexual attraction and discover an internal sense of self that is different from familial and cultural expectations. The second stage, identity comparison, develops when people face their internal sense of self and compare it with the dominant familial and societal expectations they have been following. Some individuals go through this phase quickly, acknowledging their extraordinary experience, while some hide, adopt a special case strategy (I am heterosexual, I am just attracted to this one person), or try on different identities, trying to alleviate cognitive dissonance. Unfortunately, because of fear of and actual rejection, some individuals stay in this stage of development, unable to integrate their essential knowledge of their true self with the expectations they internalize from others. The third stage of Cass's model is identity tolerance. This stage is a full recognition of non‐heterosexual identity. People in this stage may continue to hide their identities and may be able to minimally tolerate their own attractions in private and thus stay closeted. Identity tolerance is followed by identity acceptance, the fourth stage of Cass's model when individuals finally accept their self‐identity. This stage is supported by validating and loving experiences that help legitimize oppressed identities. The fifth stage, identity pride, occurs when individuals accept and prefer their own LGBTQI identity. Cass's sixth stage, identity synthesis, is the final stage of the coming out process. At this point individuals are not stuck in the “us vs. them” mentality that sometimes flavors the fifth stage of development.

Stage models like Cass's predominate throughout the literature in part because they accurately capture developmental dilemma's LGBTQI people face as well as being useful for succinctly revealing assumptions, inconsistencies, and blind spots created by heterosexism in various systems of intervention like medical, educational, and mental health systems (Kenneady and Oswalt, 2014). Because of pervasive heterosexism, most people continue to assume that those they come into contact with are heterosexual unless they are directly given reason to believe otherwise.

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