CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOANALYSIS AND HOMOSEXUALITY

In this paper, I contrast older, traditional, psychoanalytic ideas about homosexuality, with those put forth at a panel on homosexuality at the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1983 (and subsequently). I focus particularly on relationships between cross-gender behavior during childhood and adulthood homosexuality; sexual orientation and personality functioning; determinants and intrapsychic consequences of homophobia, countertransference issues in working psychoanalytically with gay and bisexual patients; the sexual orientation of the analyst (i.e. should gay patients be treated only by gay analysts?). Changing psychoanalytic ideas about sexual orientation reflect the increasingly widespread recognition by psychoanalysts of the necessity to integrate psychoanalytic theory with advances in neurobiology, particularly neuroendocrinology.