9 Lesbian & Gay Sexualities

Chapter 9: Lesbian and Gay Sexuality

The American Psychological Association, Australian Psychological Society and British Psychological Society have all produced guidelines for working with sexual and gender minorities which are well worth reading for further detail, as is the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy review of research on LGBT clients:

American Psychological Association Committee on LG Concerns (1991). Guidelines for psychotherapy with lesbian women, gay, and bisexual clients. www.apa.org/pi/lgbc/guidelines.

Australian Psychological Society. (2000). Ethical guidelines for psychological practice with lesbian, gay and bisexual clients. Melbourne: Australian Psychological Society.

Shaw. L., Butler. C., Langdridge. D., Gibson. S., Barker, M., Lenihan, P., Nair, R., Monson, J., & Richards, C. (2012). Guidelines for psychologists working therapeutically with sexual and gender minority clients. London: British Psychological Society.

King, M., Semylen, J., Killaspy, H., Nazareth, I. & Osborn, D. (2007). A systematic review of the research on counselling and psychotherapy for lesbian, gay, bisexual & transgender people. Leicester: BACP.

The Pink Therapy collection of books were the foundation of UK sexual minority  therapy. The most recent of these was:

Neal, C. & Davies, D. (2000). (Eds.). Pink therapy 3: Issues in therapy with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender clients. Buckingham: Open University Press.

There are two major US handbooks on affirmative therapy with LG clients which provide great detail:

Perez, R. M., DeBord, K. A. & Biesche, K. J. (Eds.) (1999). Handbook of counseling and psychotherapy with lesbian, gay, and bisexual clients. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Ritter, K. Y. & Terndrup, A. I. (2002). Handbook of affirmative psychotherapy with lesbian women and gay men. New York: The Guilford Press.

The following book is particularly aimed at heterosexual practitioners working with LG clients.

Kort, J. (2007). Gay affirmative therapy for the straight clinician. New York, NY: Norton.

Two further UK books are helpful edited collections of contributions around, mostly LG, issues in psychotherapy:

Moon, L. (Ed.) (2008) Feeling queer or queer feelings. London: Routledge.

Peel, E., Clarke, V. & Drescher, J. (Eds.) (2007). British lesbian, gay and bisexual psychologies. Binghampton, NY: Haworth Press.

For a more thorough overview of LGBTQ psychology (particularly thorough on LG matters), see:

Clarke, V., Ellis, S. E., Peel, E. and Riggs, D. W. (2009). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer psychology: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

There is useful material, and resources, about LG people on the following websites:

LGBT Consortium: http://www.lgbtconsortium.org.uk

Stonewall: http://www.stonewall.org.uk