Psycho-Sexual Healing

I just read an interesting post from last week on the Gay Banker blog, in which the eponymous GB publishes a little ("semi-psycho-") analysis by a reader who has gone back and digested the whole blog - no mean feat, considering the number of years it's been going. Would that all bloggers were so lucky, one might think, even to have the stamina, let alone such devoted readers!

Your blog is a kind of therapy during a trauma or crisis in your late 30s (you don't say this but I am reading between the lines) when the two sides of you came into conflict with each other. One side of you is the guy who visited the saunas and gyms, the gaydar/gay.com personals looking for no strings fun. This guy existed mainly outside the relationship with S. The other side is the guy who was asexual at college, wants stable relationships, likes family orientated Asian men, lived with S for 16 years. There is a third side perhaps, the guy who is a judge, enforces fair play and correct behaviour (we can call thus conscience).

Actually, the reason I mention it is because I have myself, in my time (albeit briefly), been "in" psychoanalysis. It was during a thankfully comparatively short dark period in my life, between university and paid employment, when my lack of progress on the qualifications and jobs front, not to mention my nocturnal activities, was giving cause for concern.

Suffice it to say, it wasn't too long before I identified the two opposite aspects of myself - the rational and the sensual, caught up as they were in a seemingly never-ending conflict with each other. More importantly, I realised that each side to a certain extent needed the other and they both needed the conflict, even if the conflict itself was having long-term psychological side-effects. Finally I accepted that in the end only some sort of peaceful settlement between the two sides was going to help me.

And perhaps that was indeed my turning-point back towards some sort of comparative spiritual health. It's been a process, since then, that could perhaps be called psycho-sexual healing.

Of course, no human being is ever entirely healthy, either physically or spiritually, and there are some scars that are too deep even for the Sacraments to heal them entirely. But provided one's conscience is at work, with the aid of God's grace, then Final Victory in the spiritual battle should never be thought of as an impossible aim.