The suicide of a therapist/gay self-help guru — Page 3

That makes a lot of sense, actually. He does seem like one of those people who, at some point, have an "ah-ha" moment and then suddenly think they've found, for lack of a better word, "the secret" to success and happiness and fail to see when and how it's not working--just blindly preaching it until it catches up with them. Obviously, I believe nothing's that simple. While I think things like positive re-inforcement, taking pride in how you look, etc, can do a lot of wonders for your state of contentment, it also can be pretty hamful when you realize, after a prolonged matter of time, that it really isn't working as well as you thought.

This may be stretching, but it kinda reminds me of the whole "The Secret"/Oprah mentality (although, while I have a ton of issues with Oprah, I think she has done a decent job of addressing that there often is more to the issue). It's all good to focus on the positive and things improving, but the problem with philosophies like The Secret, IMHo, is for a lot of people, when they do subscribe it it and then it doesn't work, they end up in a more harmful place than they were before (ie extreme cases like people hearing stories of people who have 'cured" their cancer from just envisioning it gone and working towards that--how much ****ter do they feel when it doesn't work). I know I'm crossing into something else here, but I do get that kind of sense from the way he "shrinks".

And, yes, honestly if you like your body and wanna take off your shirt, more power to you--but then don't worry what others think--how sad it seems to go to a bar, spend five minutes assessing the situation to see what the age ratio is and how others will perceive you, before doing something like that. All these games and rules just seem so pathetic (another crack therapy it reminds me of is some of the advice in dating/scoring manuals like The Game).

Oh absolutely. Which is really the first advice I think any sort of counsellor should give--I wonder if the first thing he did when his patients came to his office was asked them to take off their shirts to assess where their unhapiness was coming from.

"I wonder if the first thing he did when his patients came to his office was asked them to take off their shirts to assess where their unhapiness was coming from."

Well, he apparently did that before they stepped into his office anyway.

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how the whole gay community is complicit in building and perpetuating a bubble of self-delusion around each other

No, I can't go along with that. First of all, there IS no single "whole gay community." That is, as Namo has more eloquently stated, a false construction that was invented originally to create an advertising market.

The are dozens--perhaps hundreds--of gay communities that have no complicity at all in that message, communities that are excluded from that world, communities that reject that world, communities that don't even know about that world.

There are gay communities of color, gay communities of "size," gay communities of hairiness or scruffiness.

There are gay "differently abled" gay communities, there are gay communities within the military, there are gay religious communities. There are lesbians.

None of the people in these gay communities necessarily or automatically buy into the worldview of this man.

The suicide was his act alone. There are others like him. They may be complicit. But you cannot say the "whole gay community" is complicit when very few gay people actually share his values.

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I think maybe a better way to put it is that the gay community Bergeron saw himself a part of (and later, it seems, found himself struggling to stay a part of) is complicit in the sort of bubble he found himself in, but to some degree, that's still a prison of his own making.

Trust me, I'm well aware of the body fascism and obsession with youth and beauty within segments of the gay population, which I think is what Scripps was saying (at least that's how I read it). It's funny, because I've sought therapy to help me rise above those sorts of pressures to raise yourself to unattainable standard; it would have never ever occurred to me find a therapist to help me thrive in that sort of scene.

Eric, that's the exact point I was trying to make when I posed my question about the people/clients who bought into that philosophy.

I have to say I've been happy with whatever age I am, though in retrospect 25 was hard for me for some reason. I definitely don't miss the angst, but will admit one of the things I do miss is being carefree because of the lack of major responsibilities when I first moved to NYC.

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"despite my preconcieved notion he was too old to be taking his shirt off, or that most folks should remain clothed at Starbux."

So are you one of the people fighting the ban on nudity inside eating establishments currently being dealt with in San Francisco? :P

Honestly, that makes a lot of sense (though I keep on thinkingof the parrot sitting on his shirtless shoulder and how painful the claws must be...)

If I saw that guy in Starbucks I could see myself finding him amusing or annoying, depending on my own mood.

It's all just about remembering that at this point, people should feel free to be in gay in the way they want to be, even if that includes coming up with an algorithm for when he feels he can be shirtless in public.

Bingo! I think I meant to say something like that.

I was wrong to generalise and apologise. Phyllis and Eric articulate one of the points I was trying to make but I was also struggling to articulate a number of ideas that result from various issues going on in my own life that I am trying to make sense of. Having slept on the matter, what I think I meant is that somehow, I feel complicit in this and that is troubling me: even though I never met the guy and have never danced shirtless at a nightclub. Let me try and explain why:

1) One of my friends is in his early 40s and struggling to deal with the aging process. He’s derives a lot of self respect from still being able to dance shirtless in nightclubs and still tallying up the euphemistic notches on his bedpost. And he seems to be ratcheting up the youthful behaviour ever more desperately rather than recognising that there may come a time when it needs to change. We were in a bar a few weeks ago where his behaviour was very inappropriate and you could see the looks of shock on everyone else’s faces (although he was too drunk to notice). He’s also had to resign from a sports team recently because he can’t take the pace from the younger guys. This has hit him quite badly, even though he’s ten years older than most professionals when they retire from the same sport. And I’m struggling to know how best to be a true friend to him in these circumstances: he isn’t comfortable talking about innermost thoughts and feelings even though, in a totally out of character move, he has recently started going to church because he finds it “comforting”. When I’m with him it often feels like being in the passenger seat of a car being driven at 120mph towards a brick wall – and I want to do more for him than just grab the steering wheel at the last minute, because that last minute is inevitably, always too late.

2) Totally unprompted, an ex-bf of mine recently sent me an email with links to the profiles of his recent shags on GayRomeo. They were all about 15 years younger than him and I think it was his way of saying “Happy Birthday to me – I can still pull guys this young and good looking”. But why does he feel the need to broadcast it and let me know? Is he trying to gloat? Is he still bitter, twelve years later, that I finished the relationship?

3) I like the photograph of Dan Stevens in my avatar as I feel it says something about me, namely that you’re more likely to find me conversing and discoursing in a coffee house than you are dancing shirtless in a nightclub. But, as Dan is fifteen years younger than me, I decided it was time for something more age-appropriate and went on a three-month avatar hunt (with temporary architectural substitutes) for an alternative - and found absofcukinglutely nothing that I liked. And so have ended up back where I started. Is that a model for life as a middle-aged gay man?

4) In a parallel universe, if Bob Bergeron had lived and published his book the substantive and legitimate criticisms of it made in this thread could have been the insight that made him realize his book would not stand up to wider scrutiny and may have resulted in the end of his career as a therapist. But suicide is not the only response to that – I know several people who have created fulfilling and worthy second careers for themselves and there is no indignity in doing so.

5) I’m also reminded of the line from Company: something about “there’s a time to come to New York and a time to leave”. I think that can be re-interpreted as learning to challenge yourself, learning to recognise your limitations and then learning to adjust to them. Maybe Bob Bergeron didn’t make the latter two, but if so that is tragic not just because he was a therapist but also because he didn't have the circle of love and support from friends and family. Or he didn't let them love and support him. And that brings me back to my first point.

Updated On: 4/5/12 at 06:49 AM

What you're describing TX is what it's like to live under free market capitalism where there's always a better product around the corner to purchase in order to create a better version of yourself, the ultimate product. Bob Bergeron even went so far as to encourage people on the external packaging of themselves, without once questioning whether or not this market-based template even made sense when talking about human interaction, or whether or not there was something inside the package worth looking at.

Gay men are no more or less vulnerable to the messages designed to cause a this particular anxiety that can only be soothed through purchasing power than any other suckers born under this whole stinking system. All humans have insecurities, like Scripps's friend, and there is no better consumer than one whose insecurities run so deep they can easily be convinced there's a fix-it product for sale.

I would caution you, TX, about generalizing about all gay men going through the same patterns, earning money and having no kids to spend it on, etc. That too is an advertising hook!

I kind of lucked out when I was in my late-teens because I was a fan of punk rock and couldn't have been less interested in trying to fit in with the disco bunnies standing behind a velvet rope begging a door man to approve of their polyester pants so they could go dance to disco music. It must have been my working class roots that rejected all that aspirational Michael in The Boys in the Band BS.

Over the next decade, I was always a bit shocked that the mainstream gay world seemed so homogenized, but again, why should it be any different than the rest of the population in that regard? We aren't in reality "all" creative and smart and inventive and whatever positive generalizations have flown over the years, either.

A decade or so after that, I moved in a circle of queer writerly types and making snarky comments about the world around us came as naturally as breathing. That went on for about five years until I got together with my current partner, he had been in no way a part of that world. And I caught myself when I went to make a snarky comment about, for example, a 55 year old guy in a Hollister t-shirt with his baseball cap pulled down to his chin. I thought, "Who exactly is he hurting? Is he happy??? What if he's happy? Who am I to criticize?"

From that moment I have made an effort to say to my bf when I see somebody who might have earned a crack from me, "As long as he's happy!" It went from a behavioral modification exercise I gave myself to a subtle shift in my philosophy.

And THAT'S what still takes my breath away about the Bob Bergeron story. He appears to have been a deeply unhappy person trying to sell the key to happiness to an audience he was trying to provoke anxiety in in the first place.

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^
Agreed.

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sorry if my use of "most" generalized too much about gay men in general. The edit should read "most gay men of my acquaintance".

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