Special Needs Local therapist Colleen Logan writes the book on counseling gay men and lesbians by Wendy K. Mohon

Nearly 30 years ago, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed homosexuality from the list of mental disorders catalogued in its Diagnostic Statistical Manual. Even today, though, most graduate programs in psychology still offer little, if any, training to help therapists deal with issues faced by gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender patients. One local counselor, Colleen Logan, is working to change that.

Logan and her colleague, Bob Barret, arrived at the idea of co-authoring the new college textbook, Counseling Gay Men and Lesbians: A Practice Primer, when they realized that even within the APA’s professional organization, the American Counseling Association, the issue of homosexuality was not adequately addressed.

“Even though the [subcommittee] for counseling gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals had been in existence [within the APA] since the ’70s, they had never formalized it into the bigger organization,” Logan says. “They had divisions for multicultural, they had divisions for school counseling, divisions for assessment, but they’d never allowed the gay organization to become part of [ACA].

“It was in 1993, and I went to my first convention and I find out that ‘Oh my gosh, they’re still not a formal part of ACA? You’re kidding,’” she recalls. “And Bob and I kind of just hooked up then and said, ‘We’ve got to make a difference. We’ve got to make this happen.’
“And that year I was nominated to be co-chair with him of the organization, and within two years the Association for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Issues in Counseling became a formal organization of ACA. That was only in 1995. So it was out of that spirit of changing the world, revolution—we’re going to be at the table, we’re now voting, we’re now part of changing the fabric of counseling—that we looked at each other and said, ‘We’ve got to write a book.’”

Aimed at graduate students studying to become counselors, the text covers topics such as identity development, couples counseling, spiritual issues, and parenting. Each chapter begins with a case study, then breaks down the issue in straightforward, reader-friendly fashion. Although the book isn’t being heavily marketed outside of academia, Logan, who teaches at the University of Houston-Victoria, says the text was written to be accessible to both counselor and patient.

While both gay and straight individuals face many of the same issues, such as depression, anxiety, and relationship problems, Logan says counselors should simply be aware of how a patient’s sexuality may color each of those issues. The first step is making the straight counselor aware of their homosexual clients in the first place.

“The famous joke is, ‘What do heterosexuals think about gay people? They don’t. Why would they?’” Logan says. “So that’s true for counselors, too. If it’s never crossed their desk, it’s never crossed their studies.”

The next step is ensuring that the counselor understand that while a person’s sexuality may only be a part of his or her personality as a whole, it can affect virtually every aspect of life.

“What makes it different, what makes it a challenge, is living every day of your life in a world that’s prejudiced against you,” Logan says. “And if you happen to be African-American or Asian and a woman and gay, you’re dealing with triple minority status. And that changes your ability to, I think, be who you are in this world, love who you want to love. Just living in a prejudiced world, that makes a difference.

“Then all that prejudice and hate gets internalized and again it starts stacking up as you add status, ethnicity, and then gender. So if someone comes in and says, ‘I’m having a relationship problem,’ as you unpeel it, you start to find out, well, ‘it has to do with my parents who aren’t accepting who I am as a gay person, and I’ve never really accepted it, so I keep having multiple relationships.’”
Logan—who maintains a private practice in addition to teaching—notes that many self-help books aimed at the GLBT market end with coming out. That process, she points out, can be perpetual and a constant source of stress—“no matter how out you are.”

The petite, red-haired therapist, who fully identifies herself as out, elaborates. “I can walk along and somebody can make a comment or I can be in a situation and someone will just give me this,” Logan says, raising an eyebrow and scowling for emphasis, “and will feel that old I’m not liked, I’m hated, there’s something wrong with me because I’m gay. That’s why this book was necessary. If you are heterosexual, a lot of times, you don’t understand that.”

As an openly gay counselor, Logan says she believes “the more comfortable you are with who you are, with who you love, the better you feel,” but says she does not push clients out of the closet.

“There’s real danger out there. There is real violence. There are real consequences for being different in this world,” she says. “Hell, we can’t even deal with left-handers, so being gay is huge. But all the studies show, when people come out to others, to self, there’s a greater degree of self-esteem. There’s a greater sense of self-worth. And as people live out, no matter how out they are, there is a greater freedom to participate more fully in society.

“It’s not something I force on people, and it’s not something I choose for people. I’m with the client, no matter where the client is, and strategizing with that person how and when and if he or she wants to take steps to come out to others or come out to family or come out at work. It’s not a flip decision by any means. But I do know that the more comfortable you are with who you are, the better you feel. It’s just true.”

In addition to better training mental-health professionals to deal with gay clients, another goal of Logan’s is to eliminate the word homophobia from the vocabulary.

“Homophobia is a misnomer,” she explains “There is no such thing as a phobia toward gay people, but we continue to use this word in inappropriate ways including defense. The killer of Matthew Shepherd tried to use the ‘panic defense,’ but there’s no such thing. There is no black phobia. There’s no Asian phobia. We don’t say that. We only apply it to homosexuality.

“I think homophobia is the worst word ever. Any time I see it, in my mind, I replace homophobia with homoprejudice. I think it’s empowering, and it makes people culpable for their behavior. And the more we, as GLBT people, embrace that—that it’s prejudice when we experience it—I think the more potential we have for change.”

FACTS
• Colleen Logan, Ph.D.
• Age: 37
• Born: Northern Ireland, raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Graduated: University of Virginia, 1994
• Professor at the University of Houston-Victoria
• Partner: Deborah Bloom, also a counselor with Depelchin Children’s Center. The couple met four years ago at a counselors’ convention and are expecting their first child in September.
• Counseling Gay Men and Lesbians: A Practice Primer, co-author with Bob Barret Brooks/Cole, Wadsworth Group (www.brookscole.com)