Entendidos: A Study of Emotional Communication Among Gay Men of Barcelona

This thesis offers an analysis and a reconsideration of the emotional needs and emotional-moral experiences of a group of young gay men of Barcelona. It focuses in particular on: (1) their growing up different in the context of their predominantly heterosexual society, (2) their relationship' experiences of intimacy, love and sex and (3) their friendship and socialisation experiences both with other gay and/or straight men.

In depth interviews were carried out with a student friendship-group of eight young gay men, using elements of psychoanalytic interviewing, friendship as a relational emotional paradigm and an adapted version of a voice-centred relational method to deal with gay male experience. Findings suggest that: (a) young homosexual men of Barcelona do not necessarily assume the adoption of a gay identity (in the Anglo-Saxon way) as the only way to make sense of their homosexual emotional needs nor do their way of speaking and sharing their emotional experiences assume a linear, straightforward discourse to articulate their emotional needs and homosexual experience; (b) the cultural specificity of emotional development should be fully acknowledged and incorporated into the structure of psychoanalytic practice, instead of assuming clinical competence to deal with gay men by simply framing their experience according to heterosexual assumptions and paradigms on male emotional development, and, (c) that there is needed further sensitivity and awareness of the cultural specificity of male homosexual experiences that incorporates issues of identity, emotional needs, love, intimacy, sexuality and morality within current sociological research on gay experience, instead of reducing gay experience to mere discourse or rational narratives.