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Dr. Irving Bieber and nine of his associates at the Flower-Fifth Avenue Medical School have compiled and correlated the clinical findings of seventy-seven psychoanalysts who treated a total of one hundred and six male homosexuals and one hundred non-homosexuals. They worked from questionnaires which investigated the relationships between the parents of the homosexual patient, between the mother and patient, between the father and patient, and between the siblings; sexual development; choice of homosexual partner and homosexual practices; relationship to women; adaptational responses; and psychosomatic disorders. The extensive data was compiled and submitted to appropriate IBM machines. Significant statistical correlations were ascertained and conclusions were drawn.
The most significant person in the psychopathological upbringing of the male homosexual is his mother or substitute. The mother had defective relationships with both men and women. The vast majority belonged in the category of “C.B.I.” (close—binding—intimate) relationships with the son.
To her, this son was the most significant individual in her life. He was often made her confidante. She usually had spent a great deal of time with him in order to fulfil both her conscious and unconscious needs. The father was often replaced by the son as a love object, thereby encouraging alienation between father and son.
Close—binding—intimate and maternal seductiveness were closely related to the son's sexual problems in general, but more specifically to the homosexual aspects of his problem. The mother's binding influences through preferential treatment and seductiveness on the one hand, and the inhibiting, over-controlling influence on the other, made for tremendous conflicts and created the “double bind” from which the growing child could not extricate himself. The over-protectiveness of the child by the mother was motivated by her anxieties; it often masked her need to be over-directive and over-controlling and the