In a deeply personal and revealing post, Sherwood McPhaul, LCSW-R, shares his journey from trauma to liberation as a gay Black man, struggling to navigate societal, familial, and professional pressures along the way. 

 

“Pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”

                                                                            -Khalil Gibran Muhammad

 

Early in my career as a social worker, I worked as a residential program director for a large community-based organization in the Bronx. One day during supervision, my clinical supervisor, a white female, was preparing me for an upcoming staff meeting with other program directors and senior administrators. She said, “You have to have thick skin in this position to deal with some of the strong personalities you will be working with.” She then asked, “Do you have thick skin, Sherwood?”

I paused for a moment with my head slightly lowered in thought, feeling anxious about the question for my own personal reasons, all of which felt removed from her and shielded by privilege. Within a few seconds I lifted my head and replied, “Well, I’m a gay Black man living in a racist homophobic society. I’d say my skin’s pretty thick.” My quick, reflective reply appeared to catch my supervisor by surprise. Instantly she agreed with me, laughing anxiously.

What followed were words of light banter, which I now understand was a defense against the toxic subject of racism and homophobia. On the one hand, my supervisor validated my reality as a gay, Black, professional man living in a racially dominated world. On the other hand, I felt disturbed by what I now believe was my silent collusion with my supervisor and the social status quo, a reenactment of a socially constructed mechanism of racialized and homophobic stereotypes. In charged moments like this, I’m left with intimate questions. How did I arrive here? Do I belong here? Why do I feel like I don’t? Working in an agency providing mental health services to marginalized populations, in an increasingly data-driven culture, supervisory conversations that could have led to deeper and more empathic awareness of issues of race, gender, and sexuality in our work were prevented by the hyper-focus on chart compliance and data-driven quality compliance.

I grew up in Brooklyn, in a Southern Black family that migrated from North Carolina in order to have what was thought to be, at that time, higher quality of life: better education and employment access, with distance from the numerous degrading and graphic “Whites Only” signs which were institutionally reinforced and culturally normalized in the Southern states of this country. However, like many Black families that came to New York City from the South, we were met with much of the same institutionalized racism, oppression, exploitation, and domination which marginalized the Black community residents into categories of poverty that reduced quality of life, severely restricting possibility and assaulting the Black consciousness on a daily basis. It may not have been as overt as the “Whites Only” signs, but it was just as insidious.

In an attempt to alleviate the intensity of the stigmatizing, oppressive social forces that historically sought to dismantle the Black family, leaving them nihilistically vulnerable, my family, like many Black families, sought refuge and community connection in the Black church. Paradoxically, this led to an increase in the intensity of prejudicial social forces.

It is practically impossible to consider Black history and culture separate from the Black church. The church is foundational to Black culture, established to provide religious and spiritual salvation from a life that is vulnerable to the wages of sin, leading to spiritual death.

As a Black child and adolescent growing up in a conservative religion, attending religious activities and services was a family and community norm. I was taught not to question, but to take in the dogma that was communicated as vital to save my life and provide me with the strength required to live in a world riddled with inequalities and the evil temptations of sin. Weekly spiritual sermons meant to offer strength and emotional stimulation were saturated in gender and sexual binaries that promoted strict dichotomies of male/female and masculine/feminine. As I became older and more intimately connected with my body, conflict gradually arose and intensified with time. Shame, guilt, disgust, and confusion infiltrated me.

The natural emergence of my maturity, a cultural and biological rite of passage, was assaulted by religious persecution that identified me as an abomination to the world. The concept of eternal salvation was for me something I could only hear about but never experience. The intensely frightening thought of being banished to a place of fire and brimstone, simply because of who and what I am, was at times overwhelming and psychically attacking. Being forced to attend weekly sermons and participate in religious rituals along with a congregation of people I have known practically my entire life, people I considered spiritual brethren, there to provide connection and acceptance, became a source of profound loneliness and isolation, an aloneness I was forced to bear in silence. The very institution that established itself as a beacon of hope for humanity delivered the message to my young, impressionable mind that I was to pray for forgiveness for being who I was.  

My chosen path to becoming a psychoanalyst who specializes in sexuality and gender issues is not such a great surprise. Having now developed a deep understanding of what brings me to this field has also led to clarity and inner liberation fulfilled through personal agency. Many religions suggest that following through on same-sex desires invites personal condemnation. One of the more popular motivations for trying to overcome same-sex attraction is the need to be accepted by loved ones who reject the individual because of his or her proclivities, creating an othering experience that cultivates aloneness and encourages enactment. How do gender and sexual binaries that are culturally, socially, institutionally, religiously, and dogmatically reinforced as normal impact our patients’ sense of self and how they make meaning? How do we as psychoanalysts make space to openly explore with our patients, who as children and adults were forced to split off crucial aspects of themselves due to the traumatizing shame and guilt of religious persecution, without reinforcing the need for “thick skin”? I propose what some might consider a radical shift in psychoanalytic discourse of gender and sexuality, one that calls for the removal of thick skin and questions how gender binaries and sexual stereotypes infiltrate treatments, wittingly and unwittingly, and communicate distance that reoffends, retraumatizes, and ultimately recreates aloneness.

My personal journey of exploration into the social construction of gender and sexuality along with my work as a psychoanalyst has played a large role in my becoming the chairperson of MIP’s Sexuality & Gender Initiative. As an interpersonalist, I appreciate the value of entering the clinical dyad with a softer skin, skin that is permeable and that fosters an experience of mutual recognition that would otherwise remain hidden beneath layers of thick skin.

 

Interested in gender and sexuality? Join Sherwood McPhaul, LCSW-R, for his upcoming course, “Navigating the Trauma of Gender & Sexuality Inside and Out of the Consulting Room,” Fridays, March 6 & 13, 3-6 pm.

$180; $120 for candidates
4 CEUs for NYS social workers

Learn more and register HERE

 

Sherwood McPhaul, LCSW-R, is a contemporary psychoanalyst and psychotherapist in full-time private practice in New York City’s East Village/Union Square area. He specializes in sexuality/gender and multiculturalism, and clinical treatment of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and trauma. In addition, he is a graduate school clinical professor at Hunter College, Silberman School of Social Work, where he teaches Clinical Practice with Individuals & Families and Social Justice. Sherwood is a graduate of New York University, Silver School of Social Work, and graduate of the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis, where he currently chairs the Sexuality & Gender Initiative and serves on the Multicultural Committee.

 

 

 

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