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IN THIS ISSUE OF KORT'S KORNER:

News from Joe Kort & Associates & Joe's Blogs

New Blog: Gay Affirmative Therapy

Meetgaycouples.com: Joe's new bi-weekly column

Straight Guise: Over one-third of former American football players had sexual relations with men, study says

The Love Toilet!: COMIC RELIEF

Joe's Book Updates

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For past issues of Kort's Korner go to the archives page at

To read Joe's blogs called Outside The Kort Room and Straight Guise It is about current events, books, workshops, articles, movies and anything related to my specialties within my private practice.

Joe Kort's areas of expertise for individuals and couples are:

Individual, Group and Couple's Psychotherapy

Telephone Coaching and Consultation

Clinical Consulting and Supervision Services for Psychotherapists

Frequently Asked Questions about hiring Joe Kort for his services

Joe Kort's areas of specialties are:

Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity
Sexual Anorexia
Sexual Abuse
Straight men who have sex with men
Erotic Intelligence
Chemical Dependency
Imago Relationship Therapy
Monogamy/Nonmonogamy Issues
Breakup Recovery
Coming Out Issues
Gay Affirmative Therapy
Depression and Anxiety Disorders

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In essence, Malyon coined the term by giving a name to a concept already used in journals and books when explaining using psychotherapy techniques with lesbians and gays without stigmatizing them. This blog will be a continuing exploration of how to use gay affirmative therapy with lesbians and gays.

This blog will have all the current information which exists on Gay Affirmative Therapy.
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The LGBT Mental Health Syllabus

Introducing a new website created by the LGBT Issues Committee of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP).

The site's goal is to teach psychiatry residents about caring for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trangender, and intersex patients. The LGBT Issues Committee hopes it will also be useful to all health and mental health trainees and practitioners.The site includes a series of modules that can be used sequentially to provide a comprehensive learning guide for working with LGBT patients.

The eight modules are:

• The History of Psychiatry and Homosexuality

• Taking a Sexual History with LBGT Patients

• Psychological Development & Life Cycle

• Psychotherapy

• Medical and Mental Health

• Transgender

• Intersex

• Diversity / People of Color

Each module has been designed to be a stand-alone unit on a specific topic concerning LGBT patients. All modules include learning goals and objectives. Each module begins with a pre-test to help participants assess their existing knowledge about specific topics. After the main body of each module, a post-test helps assure that learning goals have been achieved. Modules also have relevant links, resource lists, and references to facilitate deeper exploration of topics.

For more information go to Gay Affirmative Therapy
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Gay Affirmative Psychotherapy Supervision Available now.
Are you a psychotherapist or someone in the mental health profession working with Gays and Lesbians and finding yourself wanting supervision to learn how to help this population. Contact Joe Kort, LMSW at 248-399-7317 or
email at joekort@joekort.com.

The two articles I have written so far are:

Sex-Starved Gay Male Couples:The Untold Secret & Are You A Turtle or A Hailstorm?

New! A meetgaycouples.com exclusive!

kort's korner TM

Are You A Turtle or A Hailstorm?

When my partner, Mike, and I started having communication problems in our relationship after the first year, it wasn’t pretty! I came from a family where people shouted and stomped their feet when they were angry and Mike came from a family where you swept everything under the carpet and didn’t talk about anything. Both of us came from families that had ineffective ways of communicating.

At my workshops I tell the story with humor of what life was like in the early part of my relationship with Mike when we began to have conflict. While not funny then, it is to me now. When we began having conflict Mike would tell me that I was too angry and walk away from me.

Well, in the Kort household, one Kort never walked away from another Kort in the middle of a fight. The rule was you both stayed until you both decided it was over and it wasn’t pretty. So when Mike walked out of a room I would follow him into another. He would leave that room and I would follow him into that room.

Needless to say there were not that many rooms in our home and finally he would get into his car and drive away with me in my curlers and cigarette hanging out of my mouth shaking my fist screaming for him to return!

While exaggerated, this is how scary and silly I looked to him. But to me he looked like someone just as scary who was abandoning me and making me feel unimportant.

I would later learn that Mike was a turtle and I was a hailstorm—both defenses used to protect ourselves from the hurt and pain we were feeling from our conflict.

In most relationships, one partner plays the Turtle and the other, the Hailstorm—a story written by Harville Hendrix, author of Getting The Love You Want: A Guide for Couples to describe the protagonists in the power struggle. One pulls inward, in the face of the other’s explosions. And depending on the issue, quite often the two partners can switch roles. Hailstorms can seem scarier because they’re loud and energetic. But to a Hailstorm, a Turtle’s retreat can be just as scary—making the Hailstorm feel abandoned and threatened. I use this analogy at workshops, where it usually helps people recognize this common version of the power struggle.

There’s no cookie-cutter approach to psychology, and these roles aren’t set in stone. You might be more of a Turtle in some of your relationships, a Hailstorm in others, and everywhere in between. A partner in a relationship might start out a Hailstorm and over time retreat into becoming more of a Turtle. You may find that you can immediately identify these styles in your current life, or as you reflect on your past with a former partner.

To read more go to Are you a turtle or hailstorm?
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THE SEXUALLY STARVED GAY MALE COUPLE: THE UNTOLD STORY

Gay male couples feel a lot of pressure to remain sexually fresh, new, and exciting. That's the popular stereotype.

"All gay men love sex and have it a lot" trumpets the popular press. "If I were gay," straight men joke, "I would be having sex all the time with my partner! Guys always want it!"

So gay couples think that other gay couples are enjoying all kinds of adventurous sex. After all, aren't men, gay men in particular, supposed to be sexually open and alive? But this is often not the case at all.

Gay male couples in long-term relationships (LTRs) in my office complain that they haven't been sexual for long periods of time-sometimes years. They tell me that they've agreed to get sex outside their relationship, or they are only sexual with each other when it involves a third man.

These partners question if they are really right for each other, if they're unable to keep sex alive between just the two of them. I'm quick to reassure them this problem is more common than they think. It isn't only gay couples' for whom sexual activity tapers off after their initial "honeymoon" period. For both gays and straights, sexual excitement wanes after the first two or three years.

Sexually Starved Gay Male Couple

A new scientific study performed by Dr. Anderson in the UK of former high-school American Football players has found that more than a third said they had had sexual relations with other men.

In his study of homosexuality among sportsmen in the US, sociologist Dr Eric Anderson found that 19 in a sample of 47 had taken part in acts intended to sexually arouse other men, ranging from kissing to mutual masturbation and oral sex.

The 47 men, aged 18-23, were all American Football players who previously played at the high school (secondary school) level but had failed to be picked for their university’s team and were now cheerleaders instead. They were at various universities from the American south, Mid-West, west and north west.

Dr Anderson, now of the University of Bath, UK, said the study showed that society’s increasing open-mindedness about homosexuality and decreasing stigma concerning sexual activity with other men had allowed sportsmen to speak more openly about these sexual activities. He found that this sex came in the form of two men and one woman, as well as just two men alone. He said that the sexual acts described differed from acts of ‘hazing’ or team-bonding that often include pretend-homosexual acts.

"These findings differ from previous research on North American men who have sex with men, in several ways. First, previous research describes heterosexual men in heterogeneous group sex as men symbolically engaging in sexual practices with other men. However, I find informants actually engage in sexual activity with other men. But this does not mean that they are gay.

“Second, my informants do not feel that their same-sex sex jeopardizes their socially perceived heterosexual identities, at least within the cheerleading culture. In other words, having gay sex does not automatically make them gay in masculine peer culture.”

Dr Anderson, of the University’s Department of Education, said the same situation was also true for the UK.

To read more go to Over one-third of former American football players had sexual relations with men, study says

Ah, Romantic Love...

This stage of love is the doorway to the relationship where everything is new and exiting with a partner. People often find things they have in common and want to spend their every moment with each other.

We feel so lucky, fulfilled, and finally authentic. We’ve waited a lifetime for a connection like this! We don’t want it to end. During this stage, which our society calls “true love,” everyone -- gays, lesbians, and straights alike -- reports feelings of elation, exhilaration, and euphoria.

They hope to have found the person of their dreams who promises to sustain the illusion that their lives are now fulfilled and complete. They strive to identify their similarities and reinforce a symbiotic mindset, making every attempt to find everything they share in common. Here, their psyches are trying to find wholeness.

So they talk for hours about anything and everything they can find that they have in common.

Here, people identify with each other’s similaritiesÂ-and often make the mistake of assuming they’re essentially identical, as in “You think the way I think . . . You feel the way I feel.”

Here are some normal symbiotic descriptors:

You want what I want
You see what I see
You hear what I hear
You experience what I experience

And all you want to do is spend your every moment with this person. Click on this link to see an example of romantic love!

So this youtube click The Love Toilet!

Introduction
Start Your Hero's Journey and Let Your Initiation Begin!
Chapter 1
Live in Integrity and Be Accountable to Yourself and Your Partner
Chapter 2
Become the Man You Were Meant to Be
Chapter 3
Discover How What You Hate Can Help You Love
Chapter 4
Go from a Gay Boy to a Gay Man with Your Father
Chapter 5
Recognize the Difference Between Mommy Nearest, Mommy Dearest, and Mommy Queerest
Chapter 6
Learn How To Disarm--Not Strong-arm--Your Partner In Communication
Chapter 7
Know Your Sexual Shadow
Chapter 8
Understand the New Mixed Marriage: When Three's a Crowd
Chapter 9
How to Call It Quits Without Being a Quitter
Chapter 10
Bring Your Own Shadow

By showing how to look closely at the deepest sources of your wants and needs,
"10 SMART THINGS GAY MEN CAN DO TO FIND REAL LOVE"
will help you achieve the kind of lasting close relationships you deserve.

Visit Joe's library to purchase the book.
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"10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do To Improve Their Lives

Introduction
What Works? And What Doesn’t
Chapter 1
Take Charge of Their Own Lives
Chapter 2
Affirm Themselves by Coming Out
Chapter 3
Resolve Differences With Parents and Relatives
Chapter 4
"Graduate" From Delayed Adolescence
Chapter 5
Avoid-or Overcome-Sexual Addiction
Chapter 6
Learn from Successful Mentors Who've Been There, Done That
Chapter 7
Take Advantage of "Therapy Workouts"
Chapter 8
Achieve-and Maintain-Rewarding Relationships
Chapter 9
Understand the Stages of Loves
Chapter 10
Commit to Their Partner

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Foreign translations of Joe's First Book

"10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do To Improve Their Lives" was originally published in 2003. In 2004 it was translated in both German and in Spanish.

Each of these books can be ordered at Joe's Books
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Click on the images of the books to purchase Joe's two published books at Joe's library .
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Now ready for PRE-ORDER:

Gay Affirmative Therapy for the Straight Clinician:
The Essential Guide

In press
from WW Norton Books due out in 2008*

The FIRST BOOK for helping straight clinicians work with Gays and Lesbians
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As a psychotherapist, if you have gay and lesbian clients,

It’s not enough to be gay-friendly.

The fact is, even the best intentioned therapists have some level of homophobia to overcome.

From birth, heterosexist culture imprints us to think that heterosexuality is primary, and that any other orientation is inferior.

It’s not even enough to be gay yourself.

Gay or straight, we’re taught the homo-negative belief that the "alternate lifestyle" of being gay is a more difficult way to live. But the "alternative" of living heterosexually is actually harder for gay men and lesbians, and can lead only to depression and self-defeating, or even self-destructive behaviors.

Learn the issues that gay men and lesbians face.

They may surprise you!

To pre-order click here >>> "Gay Affirmative Therapy for the Straight Clinician: The Essential Guide" by Joe Kort, MSW, LMSW

This book will offer skills and information to straight therapist working with gay, bisexual and lesbian clients. It is not enough to be gay friendly. It is crucial that therapists be armed with the facts and information to do effective work with their gay, lesbian and bisexual clients.

It is based on my work with Gay and Lesbian clients, my own personal journey as a gay male and psychotherapist of 21 years, along with the information I teach at Wayne State University's School of Social Work on Lesbian and Gay Studies
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Autographed Books

You can purchase an autographed copy of Joe's books by using a credit card or sending a check, money order to

Joe Kort, LMSW, 25600 Woodward Ave., Suite 218, Royal Oak, MI 48067

$25 per book (includes shipping and handling)
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If you want to book a signing or workshop anywhere in your area please feel free to contact me at joekort@joekort.com or 248-399-7317.