Uncharted Lives

Description

Why is that many of our most talented artists, writers, composers, dancers and actors are gay? Psychotherapist Stanley Siegel mantains that there is and that cultivating creativity is an adaptive strategy required for social and emotional survival throughout a gay man's entire life. Forced from theri earliest days to contend with oppression and ostracism, to develop without role models or encouragement from family and friends, gay men must repeatedly invent original solutions to life's dilemmas. Deprived of convection, they create their own road map to navigate the obstacles and challenges placed before them by a hostile society. In this landmark work, Stanley Siegel and co-author Ed Lowe, Jr. describe the road map for the first time and through doing so show how gay men turn crises into opportunities and challenges into advantages. Thus they demonstrate how creativity is the gay man's currency for survival. Weaving Stanley Stanley Siegel's dramatic personal history through chapters rich with more than a hiundred anedoctal interviews with gay men of all ages, ''Uncharted Lives'' offers the first full-scale alnalysis of the emotional, intellectual, social, sexual, and psychological development of a gay man in today's world. At the same time, Siegel and Lowe accept the challenge of addressing such hotly debated issues as promisquity, effeminacy, the origin of homosexuality, gay parenting, political activism, and mentoring. (Back-Cover text)

Subjects