Conversations about Psychology and Sexual Orientation

Janis S. Bohan, Glenda M. Russell

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 1999
• ISBN:
  9780814709139
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Human Sexuality in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Psychology's approach to sexual orientation has long had its foundation in essentialism, which undergirds psychological theory and research as well as clinical practice and applications of psychology to public policy issues. It is only recently that psychology as a discipline has begun to entertain social constructivism as an alternative approach.

Based on the belief that thoughtful dialogue can engender positive change, Conversations about Psychology and Sexual Orientation explores the implications for psychology of both essentialist and social constructionist understandings of sexual orientation. The book opens with an introduction presenting basic theoretical frameworks, followed by three application sections dealing with clinical practice, research and theory, and public policy. In each, the discussion takes the form of a conversation, as the authors first consider essentialist and constructionist approaches to the topic at hand. These thoughts, in turn, are followed by responses from distinguished scholars chosen for their expertise in a particular area.

By providing an array of comments and thoughtful responses to topics surrounding psychology's approaches to sexual orientation, this valuable study sheds new light on the contrasting views held in the field and the ways in which essentialist and constructionist understandings may be applied to specific practices and policies.

Chapter 1

Conceptual Frameworks

Janis S. Bohan and Glenda M. Russell

Consider these quandaries:

• A client enters psychotherapy seeking to find his “true” sexual orientation. He has had satisfying sexual and emotional relationships with women for many years but now finds himself attracted to a man.

• Researchers design a study to investigate the relationship between mental health and the level of disclosure of lesbian identity. A potential participant in the study demurs, insisting that the label “lesbian” does not match her sense of self, although she is in a long-term, exclusive relationship with another woman.

• A law intended to ensure equal rights for lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals is challenged by a right-wing group, which insists that sexual orientation is not a genuine axis of identity, that it can change, and that it is sometimes actively chosen. In support of its position, the group cites findings from cross-cultural investigations and psychological research.

In certain domains of discourse regarding sexual orientation, we can find vigorous attempts to address quandaries such as these. Most such attempts lie outside the field of psychology, but increasingly they are finding their way into the psychological literature. At the heart of many such discussions is an appeal to a distinction between essentialist and social constructionist perspectives on sexual orientation. This book is intended to enter into those discussions.

Essentialism, Social Constructionism, and Sexual Orientation

Our aim in this book is to explore the implications and ramifications of two very distinctive perspectives on psychological understandings of sexual orientation. In this chapter, we introduce certain core principles of essentialist and social constructionist¹ understandings of sexual orientation; these principles serve as a framework for a more detailed discussion of the implications of each approach for psychological praxis. Actually, it is oversimplified to speak of “an approach” in either case. Each of these perspectives entails a very convoluted set of principles, the complexity of which cannot be adequately addressed in the space available here. However, we hope to provide sufficient introduction of key elements to ground later discussions of implications of these approaches. If we are successful in that attempt, we will have tools to unpack the complexity of the issues raised here, as well as to raise others.

Ontology and Epistemology

It may be helpful to frame this discussion in terms of two intertwined but discernibly distinct levels of analysis: the ontological and the epistemological. The ontological domain addresses the question of what is: what is the nature of reality? In the case of sexual orientation, the pertinent question is this: in what sense can sexual orientation be said to exist as an actual element of reality? The epistemological domain, on the other hand, has to do with questions of knowledge: what is knowledge, how is knowledge attained, what are the criteria that warrant what we take for knowledge?

In what follows, we first examine the essentialist and the constructionist perspectives on sexual orientation, paying attention to the ontological and the epistemological components of each. We then inquire briefly as to the implications of each as it is applied to the sorts of questions that occupy psychology.

Essentialism and Sexual Orientation

The Ontological Domain

The essentialist perspective on sexual orientation is grounded in an ontology of realism—that is, the assumption that the categories employed to discuss reality in fact describe actual phenomena that exist independent of our understandings of them. Thus, from an essentialist perspective, sexual orientation exists as a free-standing quality of individuals, an essential element of individual identity, much as one’s sex, gender,² or ethnic identity.³ Sexual orientation identity, in this view, is present as a component of identity, whether or not it is acknowledged by the individual, observed by others, or given meaning by the culture. It is a fundamental and definitive axis of each individual’s core self, regardless of how that self may be manifested (or hidden) in varying situations.

In addition, essentialist ontology argues that the meaning of sexual orientation is ahistorical and universal. Essentialism asserts that sexual orientation as an element of individual identity has existed throughout history and across cultures; in every time and locale, the sex of one’s partner (or of others to whom one is attracted emotionally and/or sexually) has been a definitive contributor to identity. Thus, across time and culture, there have been individuals who were fundamentally (in contemporary Western terms) heterosexual, gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Whether or not a given culture provided words to designate these identities, whether or not there was an identifiable LGB community, whether or not these people made a point of revealing their identities, there have always and everywhere been people who defined themselves in terms of the sex of those they loved (for further discussion see Bohan, 1996).

From an essentialist ontological stance, then, sexual orientation is an extant trait of the individual, a core aspect of one’s character; such an identity is grounded in the sense that sexuality itself is definitive of one’s identity. One expression of this identity is the choice of one’s partner, with particular focus (in contemporary Western understandings) on the sex of one’s partner. Although attitudes toward variations in sexual orientation may differ across time and culture, these identities themselves have existed transhistorically and universally. They represent fundamental, essential qualities that are made manifest in what we term sexual orientation.

The Epistemological Domain

The essentialist perspective on sexual orientation meshes rather neatly with psychology’s predominant epistemological position, namely positivism. Positivist epistemology is grounded in certain basic assumptions: that there is a real world whose existence and nature are independent of its being observed; that it is possible to know, measure, and quantify this reality through the careful implementation of methodologies that are founded on the certainty of objective, value-neutral observation; and that such careful application of methods allows us to “discover” and “describe” that reality.

This positivist epistemology is perfectly suited to the essentialist perspective on sexual orientation precisely because sexual orientation is taken as an extant phenomenon that can be discovered and described. The task of science, from this perspective, is to reveal the phenomena that define sexual orientation and to answer meaningful questions about them through the application of positivist methodologies.

Social Constructionism and Sexual Orientation

Social constructionism is a relatively recent approach to questions of the meaning of “truth” and “knowledge”—in other words, to questions of both ontology (being) and epistemology (knowledge). Constructionism is relatively less well known than are the realism and positivism that undergird essentialism and that provide the foundation for psychology’s approach to sexual orientation. Accordingly, a brief discussion of the key points of constructionism is in order before we elaborate on its meaning for the topic of sexual orientation.

Social constructionism argues that we do not know reality directly. Rather, what we take as truth—that is, what we take to be an accurate description of reality—is in fact a hypothesis, a best guess based on the limited information available to us. Thus, we do not firmly “know” in the usual sense of having access to an accurate rendition of a free-standing reality. Rather, we come to particular understandings about whatever there is on the basis of the necessarily circumscribed means of knowing that are available to us. These understandings are socially constructed. That is, they are not (simply) the creations of each individual but rather reflect widely shared consensus about the nature of reality. Such understandings are indelibly marked by the beliefs and prior interpretations embedded in our own culture, including assumptions about what questions it is important to ask as well as the concepts available to us to organize our understandings.

In particular, our understandings are shaped by the language we employ and the categories we create to define and describe the phenomena we take to be reality. The straightforward quality of this statement belies the profound change in perspective that it signals. We mean this statement literally. We elaborate on it further as this discussion proceeds and return to it repeatedly throughout the book.

In addition, it is important to recognize that the language and the categories available to us reflect the belief system of the dominant culture, framing our understandings and realities in a manner congruent with that culture’s values. Thus, our shared understandings reproduce, support, and perpetuate the status quo. For example, much of the discourse on sexual orientation from all sides—including from LGB-affirmative positions in psychology and in the culture at large—has been couched in terms of categories defined by this prevailing discourse.

The understandings we construct do not seem to us to be hypotheses but seem self-evidently true. In other words, we believe we describe some extralinguistic reality—a reality that exists outside and beyond discourse—rather than an understanding profoundly shaped by linguistic forms. Although we believe we have “discovered” and are describing reality, we are actually putting language to the visions gained through the lens of our particular context. Rather than describing a free-standing reality, the particular discourse we employ to express our so-called knowledge does not simply represent reality. Rather, that discourse—the language, beliefs, statements, terms, and categories we employ—endows experience with meaning, actually forges the meanings that we take to be reality. Our experience is thus formed not by reality but by discourse, by our particular constructions—which themselves reflect and support familiar cultural understandings (e.g., Berger & Luckmann, 1967; Gergen, 1985; Hare-Mustin & Marecek, 1988,1990; Sampson, 1993a, 1993b).

To apply this concept to our own circumstance, in the sociocultural milieu in which American psychology currently functions, we “know” that there are two sexes, male and female, and two genders, masculine and feminine.⁴ The notion that there are two sexes seems self-evident—until, that is, we consider the case of “intersexes,” individuals who do not fit the criteria presumed to place one in one or the other category and who routinely face surgical procedures to “fix” themselves so that they will fit into these arbitrary categories (e.g., Fausto-Sterling, 1992; Money, 1987, 1988). Or until we consider cultures that recognize a third and even a fourth gender and that understand these not as variations on the two that seem so obvious to us but as genuinely distinctive categories of sex/gender (Blackwood, 1984; Tafoya, 1992; Whitehead, 1981; Williams, 1986). Such variations in meaning illustrate what is meant by the social construction of reality.

Importantly, the constructionist argument asserts that, no matter how self-evident our own particular deductions appear, they are no more certain, no more directly representative of “truth” than are other, very different understandings. If we cannot know reality directly but only through the limited vision of our own position, then we cannot legitimately assert that our rendition correctly taps some core truth about human experience.⁵ In contrast to the positivist assumption that we can match our depictions against reality and thereby test their validity, constructionism asserts that there can be no unconstructed standard against which to compare one or another understanding, no criterion for validity in the usual (positivist) sense.

Faced, then, with the question of why one or another idea/construction holds sway, constructionists argue that, since the preference for one construal over another cannot be grounded in an objective match to reality, such preference must reflect some other basis of judgment. The selection of one understanding over another occurs for good reasons, and constructionists insist that it is possible to dismantle (or deconstruct) a given pattern of so-called knowledge to consider why this rather than that particular piece of certainty has evolved. Thus, we can ask the questions “Why this understanding, in this culture and at this time? And what would be the consequences of our adopting a different understanding?” (see especially S. L. Bem, 1993, 1995; Kitzinger, 1987, 1995; Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 1995). Again, notice that the question here is not which construction is more accurate but what are the implications of embracing one or another construction.

The Ontological Domain

Applied to sexual orientation, the constructionist approach suggests that sexual orientation is not a trait or quality of individuals. Rather, it is a socially constructed notion, a construct that imbues certain acts and experiences with a particular meaning; these experiences are taken as expressions of an identity grounded in (what we term) sexual orientation. However, these experiences are not intrinsically or necessarily manifestations of identity, nor need identity be organized around the nature of one’s erotic and affective attachments. Viewed from a different historical or cultural position, these same phenomena would carry a very different meaning. Same- or other-sex attachments would not necessarily be seen as constitutive of identity; indeed, there might be no construct of sexual orientation at all, no sense that the sex of one’s partner is significant to one’s sense of self. In Padgug’s (1989) words,

The members of each society create all of the sexual categories and roles within which they act and define themselves. The categories and significance of the activity will vary as widely as do the societies within whose general social relations they occur. (P. 60)

The Epistemological Domain

From a constructionist perspective, so-called knowledge does not represent a discovery of an independently existing reality but rather the construction of an understanding generated and validated by social discourse. Thus, it is not possible to employ particular methodologies in order to discover and describe the parameters of sexual orientation identity. In contrast to psychology’s positivist stance, constructionism argues that whatever understanding we have of that construct is not a product of objective observation but one of collective exchange—albeit one in which prevailing understandings have disproportionate influence in comparison to less dominant discourse.

In a position that can be seen as straddling the epistemological and ontological domains, constructionism asserts that we actually create rather than describe reality through the discourse we employ and that this creation is dynamic and constantly evolving. The weaker version of this argument contends that what we construct is meaning. That is, the same phenomenon takes on very different meanings in various cultures or across time. Such meaning, in turn, provides a script for how members of that culture relate to the phenomenon in question.

Strong constructionism, on the other hand, insists that we actually construct not only meanings but phenomena themselves through discourse (e.g., Kitzinger, 1995). Thus, naming a thing actually speaks it into being. There is no such thing as extralinguistic reality; our discourse creates what it bespeaks. In terms of sexual orientation, for example, the very notion that one can or should define identity in terms of sexual or affectional preferences causes people indeed to understand themselves in that way. The provision of specific categories “describing” sexual orientation defines for individuals the options available to them. The discourse “describing” characteristics of members of those categories in turn frames individuals’ own self-definitions and shapes their behavior.

Intersections between Essentialism and Constructionism

For the project we undertake here, we have recourse to both essentialist and social constructionist perspectives. Both have contributed to understandings of sexual orientation, and both have value in application to actual events. At the same time, these two perspectives represent significant differences in both epistemological and ontological domains, and any effort to merge the two is, therefore, oxymoronic.

Most psychological research and theory that deal with sexual orientation have derived from an essentialist approach. We naturally draw extensively on this corpus of work to illuminate the essentialist perspective. We also—and here is an oxymoronic twist—draw theory and data drawn from essentialist models to illuminate a social constructionist perspective. We recognize the inherent—and inevitable—contradiction in using essentialist approaches to support a constructionist perspective.

With a parallel twist, we employ a social constructionist framework in two distinct ways. First, we use social constructionism as an epistemological tool for critiquing essentialist approaches to sexual orientation. In this case, social constructionism is an epistemological tool for looking at (and deconstructing the very notion of) sexual orientation. We then use constructionism as an ontological device, offering it as an alternative framework for understanding the phenomena we know as sexual orientation. In what follows, we consider the interrelationship of essentialism and social constructionism on the ontological and the epistemological levels.

The Ontological Domain

Constructionism suggests that the understandings assumed by a particular culture act to frame its members’ experience and to shape their behavior. In this culture, at this time, our understanding or construction of sexual orientation is an essentialist one. That is, the dominant understanding is that sexual orientation is indeed a core, essential, fixed attribute of individual identity.

Sexual orientation may well be a socially constructed meaning imposed on experiences that could equally well accommodate myriad other meanings. However, this particular, essentialist meaning is the one that individuals in this culture are likely to embrace (cf. Cass, 1984, 1990; Schippers, 1989). Thus, individual identities inevitably reflect and instantiate socially constructed understandings.

Each person’s coming to her or his identity involves creating narratives about who she or he is. This is far more than a matter of making up stories, and it implies neither truth nor the absence thereof. Rather, from a constructionist perspective, creating narratives is a dynamic and reiterative process that has generative impact. Creating narratives actually shapes individual identity (e.g., Cass, 1990; Crawford, 1995; Frantz & Stewart, 1994; Hermans & Hermans-Jansen, 1995; Park, 1992; Personal Narrative Group, 1989; Sarbin, 1986; Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 1995).

The conceptual categories and the language available for narratives of individual identity necessarily consist of the language and the categories created by our collective constructions of the notion of sexual orientation. People in this culture can thus be expected (from a weak constructionist perspective) to imbue their experience with essentialist meaning. They might also be expected (from a strong constructionist perspective) to be influenced to a large extent by the dictates of essentialist understandings of the categories provided and the attributions associated with those categories. Put directly, the understandings we have (collectively) created become scripts ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction: The Conversation Begins
• 1 Conceptual Frameworks
• 2 Implications for Clinical Work
• 3 The Best of Both Worlds: Essentialism, Social Constructionism, and Clinical Practice
• 4 Who Do We Want You to Be? A Commentary on Essentialist and Social Constructionist Perspectives in Clinical Work
• 5 Don’t Look for Perfects: A Commentary on Clinical Work and Social Constructionism
• 6 Implications for Psychological Research and Theory Building
• 7 Bringing Psychology in from the Cold: Framing Psychological Theory and Research within a Social Constructionist Psychology Approach
• 8 Psychology of Sexual Orientation
• 9 Implications for Public Policy
• 10 Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Issues in Public Policy: Some of the Relevance and Realities of Psychological Science
• Afterword: The Conversation Continues
• References
• Index