Gay Men: Loss, Grief, and Mourning and the Reopening of Foreclosed Psychic Space

A Scientific Meeting Presented by Dr. Robert Benedetti, Ph.D

• November 7, 2025

• 6:30 - 8:00pm ET

• Location: Virtual and In Person (Cleveland)

• Source/ Event Link: Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center

“Nearly 30 years after the height of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, when there was not yet hope for a cure and when it was at its most grim, there remains an aging group of gay men who are confounded in their grief. When AIDS appeared, their sexual behavior was linked with illness and death further contributing to their sense of precarity and their experience of alienation.

By 1995, AIDS was the single greatest killer of men in America ages 25-44 but with the introduction of protease inhibitors, survivors of this devastating period including those who are HIV+, are often isolated and left to endure a complicated grieving process. Reinforcing the alienation associated with AIDS, the psychoanalytic literature is limited in which grieving experiences of individuals from stigmatized groups such as gay men is interrogated.

In addition to the AIDS related focus on loss, this paper, which won the 2025 Ralph E. Roughton Award for Best Paper by the Committee on Gender and Sexuality of the American Psychoanalytic Association, brings in the concept of the apres-coup and how it can be applied to the historical situatedness of gay men. Since psychic space for gay men is often foreclosed, ways in which this may be addressed and implications for the analytic relationship are considered.”