Nina Turner asks:
>>>
One of my gen psych students asked the other day if Freud had
homosexual tendencies. The student said that he had heard that from his
high school psych teacher. Is it true???? I told him I wasn't sure, but
would try and find out.
>>>
Freud had a very close relationship with Wilhelm Fliess, an ENT physician in
Berlin. Over a period of many years, they corresponded regularly and met
regularly, to discuss their "scientific" ideas. According to Masson (1985;
_The complete letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess; 1887-1904. Harvard
University Press.): "Fliess became Freud's closest friend, and Freud was more
open with Fliess than with anyone else in expressing his feelings and thoughts
about professional and personal matters" (p. 2).
Freud believed that there was a "homosexual component" to this friendship. In
a letter to Sandor Ferenczi in 1910, Freud said: "Since Fliess's case, with
the overcoming of which you recently saw me occupied, that need [to uncover
my personality completely] has been extinguished. A part of homosexual
cathexis has been withdrawn and made use of to enlarge my own ego. I have
succeeded where the paranoiac fails" (note 2, pp. 2-3, in Masson's book).
Of course, Freud believed that we all have "homosexual tendencies," so it
would not be unusual for Freud to make this attribution. Did he have homosexual
tendencies? Well, I'm not sure it really matters, but I suppose one would have
to first define the term.
Jeff Ricker
Scottsdale Community College
Scottsdale AZ
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
