Through identifying the passages and signposts of a gay man's psychological development, psychotherapist Stanley Siegel demonstrates that cultivating creativity is an adaptive strategy required for social and emotional survival throughout a gay man's life course.

Forced from their earliest days to contend with the disadvantages of oppression and ostracism, to develop without encouragement from role models and families and friends, gay men repeatedly invent original solutions to life's dilemmas. Deprived of convention, they create their own road map to navigate the obstacles and challenges placed before them by a hostile society.

In this landmark work, Siegel and co-author Ed Lowe describe this road map for the first time, and through doing so show how gay men turn crises into opportunities and challenges into advantages. Thus they demonstrate how creativity is the gay man's currency for survival.

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Weaving Siegel's dramatic personal history through chapters rich with more than a hundred anecdotal interviews with gay men of all ages, Uncharted Lives offers the first full-scale analysis of the emotional, intellectual, social, sexual, and psychological growth and development of a gay man in today's world. Certain to provoke heated debate, Uncharted Lives addresses such issues as promiscuity, effeminacy, the origins of homosexuality, gay parenting, political activism, and mentoring.

This thoughtful book will be both revelatory and therapeutic for gay readers and enable straight readers to better understand their gay sons, colleagues, and friends.