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Dr. Ruitenbeek has assembled a collection of essays which deal primarily with psychoanalytic interpretations of such well-known homosexual literary figures as Andre Gide, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Arthur Rimbaud, Denis de Saint-Parin, Walt Whitman, Radclyffe Hall, Emile Zola, Oscar Wilde, and Marcel Proust. This material is interpreted and correlated with the lives of the artists by various analytic writers—all of whom are relatively unknown with the exception of Gustav Bychowski.
The compiler of this book has included a short introduction, in which he identifies himself with neo-Freudian and existential analysts who consider homosexuality not only a problem of sexual expression but also of identity. He quotes generously from Horney, Lussheimer, Wenkart and Gershman. However, the psychodynamic formulations of the many contributors are deeply enmeshed in orthodox Freudian concepts.
In order to appreciate this book, one must have considerable familiarity with the works of the literary masters under discussion. In the majority of the essays, there was not adequate reliable clinical material presented to warrant the conclusions drawn by the various authors.