Gay-Friendly Psychoanalysis and the Abiding Pleasures of Prejudice (original) (raw)

2018, Studies in Gender and Sexuality

Psychoanalysts in North America have mostly rejected the theory that homosexuality in men is "caused" by developmental arrest. Most have also rejected the belief that the Oedipus Complex is the main determinant of adult sexuality (a belief that used to be the very foundation of psychoanalytic thinking). Today's "gay-friendly" psychoanalysts deplore the mid-20th-century analysts who, in the name of bedrock Freudian principles, pathologized homosexuality and believed they could "cure" it. However, the author argues, this wholesale expulsion of a giant body of mainstream theory has two downsides: It pressures us to fudge our clinical perception when we encounter that rare patient who actually does fit the profile of the "sick" homosexual of the past. And it lets us elide the likelihood that fashionable moralism and self-interest may still be distorting our clinical judgment today. I begin with a story about keeping a secret from a supervisee: Several years ago I supervised the first year of treatment of a young man whose presenting complaint was "a problem with incompletes." Eric, the patient, had been referred for therapy to avoid expulsion from college; in two years he had finished fewer than one-third of his courses. "I've always been this way," he told his therapist. "I know I have the talent to do really well but I have zero motivation to work at anything. I start every semester with enthusiasm-like, THIS is going to be the semester I really shine! But then somewhere around week 4 I get bored, or frustrated, and something sets in where I just stop going to class." Something similar happened in his close relationships: He would lose interest in friends, and his one important romantic relationship-a girlfriend he was together with for two years-was "sort of in a twilight state at this point. I know I don't want to break up with her, but it hasn't really felt like a romance since the first few weeks." The therapist treating him at the college clinic was perplexed. "I can't figure out what makes Eric tick," she said a few times. We set about trying to figure out what Eric DID care about: He had reported being treated in high school for "major reactive depression" triggered when a foreign student whom he had become close friends with moved back to Ecuador. "Boy or girl?" I asked the therapist. "Boy." And what classes has he passed? "Dramatic arts," she said. "It's his minor." "Could Eric be gay?" I asked the therapist. "I've brought up the possibility," the therapist said. "He denies it. He says he's uncomfortable around gay people-he was in a gay bar once and he panicked. He felt that all the men around him would want him to 'be the girl.'" In addition, there was no reason to believe that Eric would keep it a secret: He had a gay brother, 15 years older, who had been out "forever" and who was accepted and beloved by both parents. About a year into the treatment the patient mentioned that he was in the habit of carrying a knife-every day at school and almost any time he left the house. The therapist asked why, and the patient launched into a complex matrix of evasions that boiled down to paranoia and preoccupation with