Some comments in relation to the YouTube image of "Freud" saying the
following:
"Male homosexuality is the result of an absent father and an overbearing
mother."
This, of course, has been the standard psychoanalytic view of the matter,
but in fact Freud came up with three quite distinct theories of male
homosexuality. Here is his first, a fixation to the idea of a "woman with a
penis":
Starting from the assumption (he would say "observation") that it is a
"characteristic of children" [he means male children!] that they "attribute
to everyone, including females, the possession of a penis", and following a
notion suggested from his Little Hans analysis, Freud concludes: "If this
idea of a woman with a penis becomes 'fixated' in an individual when he is
a child... making him as a man unable to do without a penis in his sexual
object,... he is bound to become a homosexual..." (1908, SE 9, pp. 215-16;
see also 1909, SE 10, p. 217)
The second explanation involves the (male) individual identifying with his
mother:
"In all our male homosexual cases the subjects had a very intense erotic
attachment to a female person, as a rule their mother, during the first
period of childhood; this attachment was evoked or encouraged by too much
tenderness on the part of the mother herself, and further reinforced by the
small part played by the father during their childhood." [At this point
Freud cites I. Sadger stating that mothers of his homosexual patients were
frequently "masculine women" with "energetic traits of character who were
able to push the father out of his proper place", and remarks that he is
more strongly impressed by cases in which the father was absent - no doubt
referring to the single case he was then analysing, that of Leonardo.]
Then, according to Freud, "The child's [over-intense] love for his mother
cannot continue to develop consciously any further... The boy represses his
love for his mother: he puts himself in her place, identifies with her, and
takes his own person as a model in whose likeness he chooses the new
objects of his love. In this way he becomes a homosexual." [1910, SE 9, pp.
99-100]
A third explanation, involving a fixation to an early narcissistic stage of
development, arises from the Schreber analysis: The individual "begins by
taking himself, his own body, as his love object, and only subsequently
proceeds from this to the choice of some person other than himself as his
object". If individuals are unable to emancipate themselves from the early
narcissistic stage of development, their later object of choice "must
possess genitals like their own". [1911, SE 12, pp. 60-61]
Then again, you may prefer the theory that male homosexuality may arise
from "weak eye-hand coordination which results in an inability to play
sports well", resulting in "severe peer rejection":
http://www.narth.com/docs/ssad.html
Allen Esterson
Former lecturer, Science Department
Southwark College, London
http://www.esterson.org
Reference:
M. Macmillan. (1997 [1991]). *Freud Evaluated: The Completed Arc.* MIT
Press.
---
To make changes to your subscription contact:
Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
