Jun 10, 2019
Walt
Odets is a clinical psychologist in private practice who
has worked with and written about the psychological, developmental
and social lives of gay men for more than three decades.
His seminal book, In the Shadow
of the Epidemic: Being HIV-Negative in the Age of AIDS, which
Duke University Press published in 1995, was selected by The New
York Times as one of the “Notable Books of the
Year.”
Odets’s recent work has focused on the psychological aftermath of the HIV epidemic, the long-standing childhood and adolescent stigmatization and trauma experienced by young gay men, and the conventional idea of “the homosexual” and its negative influences on gay identities, self-realization and relationships between men. This work has culminated in a new book, OUT OF THE SHADOWS: Reimagining Gay Men’s Lives, which examines the hopes and new possibilities for gay men today.
Episode Highlights
- Walt talks about how he went
from being a photo journalist to becoming a
psychologist.
- He shares stories about how it
was to start his therapy career right in the middle of the AIDS
epidemic, and how that influenced his first book, Into the
Shadows, which depicts the relationships between negative and
positive gay men.
- His newer book, Out of the
Shadows, is a continuation from the first, and is a response
to the way gay men are relating now, twenty-five years
later.
- We discuss the way young gay men
today relate to HIV, AIDS and PrEP/Truvada.
- Walt shares his ideas about the
difference between what it means to be “homosexual” versus
“gay.”
- He shares his thoughts on how
gay men develop shame from the way most men in our culture are
raised, and societies relationship to the feminine. This
effects the way they experience isolation in community later in
life.
- Walt offers some insights about
how to begin to overcome shame.
Web links
- Find his books & more at WaltOdets.com
- Find Walt on FaceBook
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