The Psychoanalytic Theory of Male Homosexuality.

Abstract

The psychoanalytic theory of male homosexuality is reviewed and criticized. Freud, despite certain cultural presuppositions, outlined the basic theory, emphasizing oedipal dynamics, which was confirmed and amplified by his immediate followers, who, however, stressed the connections between homosexuality and rather severe psychopathologies such as paranoia and schizophrenia. Nevertheless, this early group allowed for the possibility of outcomes of the Oedipus Complex alternative to the normative one of heterosexuality. They also maintained the importance of such consitutional factors as innate bisexuality and narcissistic object choices. In the 1930s and 1940s, the prominent interest in oral precursors of the Oedipus Complex exp and ed the analytic discourse on homosexuality, but also reinforced the notion of the intrinsic psychopathology of that condition. At about the time of World War II, psychoanalytic norms of health and normalcy became more conventional, so that the data presented by the Kinsey Report were, for the most part, rejected by analysts. After the War, the tendency of psychoanalysts to subscribe to American social norms increased, primarily among "revisionist" schools of psychoanalysis. Theoretically, such constitutional factors as narcissism and bisexuality were reformulated as defensive manoeuvres, a teleology for the Oedipus Complex in heterosexual genitality was posited, and rhetorically the character of homosexuals was vilified. This split in psychoanalysis became focused during the APA decision to delete homosexuality from the list of emotional disorders, which also began to consider such issues as the necessarily psychopathological condition of homosexual object choice and the appropriateness of curing that condition. A concluding chapter suggests that the limitations in the psychoanalytic theory of male homosexuality were due to an embourgeoisement of analytic norms, an innate gynaikophobic stance and a counter-transferential defense against homosexual trends in analysts themselves.