The reworking of sexuality in the therapy process presents perhaps the most intimate and important restorative work of all. For men who have known the compromising position of pleasure and pain during childhood molestation, to be close often means being sexual; and to be vulnerable can mean being a potential victim or potential perpetrator.The therapists carefully note erotic transference and/or their countertransferential responses. Once again, acute timing and skill is required with these sexual issues so that group members do not feel shamefully exposed or revictimized.There are some special considerations for therapists who are abuse survivors themselves. Co-therapists must debrief together and assess their own overstimulation, overidentification with the survivors, body memories that arise during group, or, if the therapists are more zealous, angry or obsessive than their clients on a particular subject. The team must monitor one another if one fails to explore the material, if one protects perpetrators, if one dissociates, or neglects to get supervision on an issue. The most important guideline therapists can follow is that they do their personal work in individual therapy to understand their own issues.
Group therapy is going to be a series of frustrations, accommodations, and betrayals'; of disappointment, misses, and working through. The work of a male-survivors group will be to validate what it really means to be a man, to confront the truth about the old patterns and story lines. The task of the clinicians will be to provide a real presence which affirms and validates the true self. Even when the members blame, diminish, rage or fight with the process, or attempt to seduce, or re-enact the old abusive relationships, therapists will provide a continuous frame without regressive gratification or exploitation.
To do all of this will be no small task. To act together as co-therapists will require time, relentless and honest communication, a good sense of humor, self-vigilance, ongoing consultation, and humility. Co-therapists will be modeling, both in and out of the treatment room, a healthy relationship with all its warts, pimples, and beauty.
For the group, what does it mean to be "brothers" in this together? Can one feel so safe that one can say what he wants, can work out his fears and anger, tell his secrets, honor each man's privacy and his own, set limits, and yet be intimate enough that he can recognize the darker faces of familiarity without acting them out? If this is possible with other men in a safe therapeutic holding environment, men can venture together toward restoration and recovery.