(Johnathan is a real person. He is a *therapist*, not a patient, so information about him was not divulged during therapy. Nevertheless, as is common practice, I have altered identifying information in order to protect his anonymity.)
Johnathan is an accomplished psychotherapist. Something has been driving him hard to pursue the job incessantly since his early years, and he has managed to become a recognizable figure in his specific field.
The bulk of Johnathan's clients are women. Some gay men, and only a couple of straight males. This is hardly a particularity, though.
Johnathan grew up with an older sister. Right off the bat, he has been taught that his place in the family hierarchy is *below*. Below everyone. He has been given the smallest room, has had it taken away from him at the first chance, and he has learned to step lightly around others, lest something terrible happen to him. His father has always been "just a shadow in the house". He barely registered his existence, so in Johnathan's mind the word "others" refered only to "females", originally his mother and sister. He has been unable to stand up for himself as a boy, because of the subtle undermining of every such expression by those "others". So terrified has he been as a kid, that rebelion has never been an option. Instead, at a very deep level in his soul he has *compromised*: he has sought to appease the females, since this has been his only way to survive.
His mother sexually loathed his father. She has stayed with him because of the social conventions of the time, but were it another era, might she had lead a lesbian life? Nobody can tell for sure. The fact is that Johnathan is at his best with his lesbian clients.
What is important is that Johnathan somehow identified with his mother's sexual longing. He desires women, but, since he can't concieve of himself, i.e. someone born a male, satisfying them, (just as his dad couldn't satisfy his mother), he is kind of split about them. He desires them *romantically*, but doesn't go near them *sexually*. His vocation very neatly fits into this schema: as a professional psychotherapist he is "forbidden" to have *sexual* relationships with his female clients. Nevertheless, he maintains the fantasy of an deep *emotional* (isn't it also a *romantic*?) connection. In his mind, he's the husband of his female clients. He looks out for their best, since their husbands are ("naturally") unable to do so. Their bond is *special*. Johnathan has advised about every single one of his female clients to have extramarital relationships, so that they find sexual fulfillment. He gets jealous when his female clients start to get along better with their husbands, usually through circumstances and luck, and works to undermine that emotional connection by reminding his clients of their husbands' past wrongdoings. Getting along with her husband wouldn't only threaten the special bond Johnathan has with his female client, it would prove that a woman can be satisfied with her man, which would be devastating for the schema that Johnathan has formed throughout his life, a schema that has shaped his understanding of the world (of women) and his place in it as a facilitator.
It's not always calmness and ataraxia, the psychic life of Johnathan. Far from it. Under the calm surface, he constantly boils. He routinely goes on extreme rage fits towards his inferiors, which are delivered in a deadly manner learned through his mother: passive aggressiveness. Since a sexual outlet towards women has been blocked (and, frankly, feels quite terrifying), he has found other sexual outlets, which I won't specifically discuss. These don't have so much a sensual or physical character, but rather center around an imaginary tranformation, annuling the masculine and transforming it into a feminine.
Especially with his male clients, Johnathan functions not quite as an individual human being, but rather as a force of nature: as an embodiment of his mother's sexual strategy - and her rage. He acquiesces to *attractive* male clients having sex with women, provided that they "put the woman first", they submit to her frame. Even if "she" is just a random woman and the man is his paying client. And he puts unattractive men on a permanent reform plan, a constant seminar of how to worship the feminine, which is supposed to bring them sex at some point in the future, by women recognizing the man's devotion and pure intents.
Couples therapy is another opportunity for Johnathan to implement his meaning-making ritual: *He* is the woman's sexual strategy, something that has absolute priority against anything else - the wellbeing of the children included. He steadily advances a plan of total female dominion, using the typical trick of ackowledging small, non-essential demands of the husband in order to keep him involved in the process, while forcing the heavy-handed, strategic female demands.
That's the best Johnathan can do. Arrange his life around the opportunity, provided by the current mainstream, to constantly suppress the notion that he has been *used* by his mother, to the extend that his very sexuality has been altered. Failure to do so, i.e. the realization of the exploitation and abuse he has been through even as a toddler, threatens a complete psychotic breakdown. In the face of this terror, the interests of his clients, male or female, are of a neglegible importance.
Tip adam-l for their post.