Kathleen M. Collins

Heterosexism negatively impacts the mental health of sexual minorities, although the degree to which people are impacted and the nature of how they respond to minority stressors varies. In this systematic review, the authors synthesize literature on heterosexism and three psychodynamic personality factors—attachment style, defense style, and ego identity—and reconceptualize heterosexist stigma as something that not only impairs mental health but also influences personality development. The authors present a theoretical framework that outlines the bidirectional influences between sociocultural contexts and the self, which can inform future research and clinical work with sexual minority clients.

This article articulates principles and practices that support methodological integrity in relation to critical qualitative research. We begin by describing 2 changes that have occurred in psychological methods over the last 15 years. (a) Building on foundational work advocating for epistemological pluralism, guidelines on how to design, review, and report qualitative and mixed methods have been advanced to support methodological integrity in keeping with a diversity of researchers' aims and approaches. (b) There has been an increased use of critical epistemological perspectives and critical methods. In light of these changes, the current article puts forward principles to support critical qualitative researchers when considering methodological rigor and when formulating rationales to support their methods in the journal article review process. Illustrating the principles with an example of critical research, the article describes common problems and issues in the research design process that can be considered in order to strengthen the returns of critical studies. Recommendations are made for editors and reviewers on how to conduct reviews of critical qualitative research, and pressing concerns for publishing critical qualitative research are detailed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Background: Expressive writing exercises are associated with psychological benefits for LGBTQ + adults processing sexual minority stressors, but the processes through which this occurs remain unclear. Methods: A discovery-oriented task analysis was conducted on emotion-focused expressive writing responses about troubling heterosexist experiences. Eighteen cases were analyzed in total. Results: The analyses produced a four-stage model that describes the processes of resolving distress related to heterosexism. Conclusion: Results provide guidance for LGBTQ + affirmative mental health practitioners by naming the processes that clients may experience on the pathway to healing and identifying common obstacles to progress that clients may exhibit.

Expressive writing exercises, in which participants self-reflect upon a difficult experience, are widely researched interventions. These exercises have been adapted to address a host of concerns, including trauma, mental distress, physical health, and minority stress. Although several theories exist about the mechanisms through which expressive writing yields psychological benefits, the direct perspectives of those who have completed expressive writing exercise has remained unexplored. This study used grounded theory methods to analyze sexual minority adults’ interviews about their experience of engaging in various formats of expressive writing exercises about personal heterosexist events. Participants described both what they found helpful and frustrating about the writing process and reflected on how their perspectives shifted throughout the process. These findings contribute to the literature on how change occurs in expressive writing and provide guidance on how to assist sexual minority adults in healing from heterosexism in their lives.

This chapter focuses on an activity which entails an expressive writing exercise intended to help clients process experiences of heterosexism that they have had. Objectives of the exercise include permitting clients to focus on these experiences in order to more fully process their effects or regulate emotions connected to them; to develop insights about themselves, interpersonal dynamics, or societal systems that contributed to heterosexist events; and to develop strategies for coping with these events, relationships, or systems. Heterosexism refers to the pervasive attitude in Western culture concerning the superiority of heterosexual orientations, relationships, and behaviors, and the resulting systemic oppression of all nonheterosexual identities. Heterosexism is perpetuated through both individual factors, such as attitudes and behaviors, and systemic factors, such as policies and actions that discriminate against nonheterosexuals. Heterosexism is transmitted not only through overt acts of discrimination, such as acts of violence or the lack of equal civil rights.

Quite a number of heated arguments have been put forth in the controversy about the meanings and appropriate uses of femme identities. In this article, the authors apply a functionalist theoretical framework, developed to explicate the links between gender and gender identities, to reframe the disputes about femme gender. They position two femme identities as responding to distinctive forms of oppression—one that centralizes the affirmation of gender diversity in the face of cisgenderism, and one that centralizes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) femininity to counter femmephobia. They consider the subversive functions of the two identities in terms of unmet needs across four domains. These needs include the need for authenticity in identity (psychological domain); for the prizing of socially devalued characteristics (cultural domain); for security and affiliation (interpersonal domain); and for aesthetic desirability rather than shame (sexual domain). Instead of seeing the two femme identities as at odds, they see them as serving some shared functions, but also distinctive functions in resisting stigma of varied forms. The framework can be applied to other forms of femme-inity (and other genders) to distinguish the varied meanings inherent in gender identities and facilitate research that advances gender theory.

Within the field of counselling and psychotherapy research, qualitative methods have been a longstanding tradition of inquiry due to the mutual interest of therapists and researchers in both internal experiences and intersubjective processes. Methodological integrity is a conceptual framework that has been advanced to increase the rigor of these methods. In this paper, we consider the value of this concept for counselling and psychotherapy researchers and reviewers. This framework guides investigators and reviewers to consider how procedures can be adapted to meet the goals of specific studies, given their characteristics and approach to inquiry. In this brief article, we exemplify the relevance and application of this concept to this field by describing the decision‐making process within the designing of a qualitative research project to investigate clients' needs within rape crisis counselling. Through this exemplar, we also provide guidance to counselling and psychotherapy researchers on considerations during the process of research review and reporting.