Discussion

Dr. Gershman has presented very many interesting and enlightening ideas. His paper is refreshing in its approach to homosexuality and dream analyses. While I agree with his basic concepts, I would like to expand, clarify and modify some of his points.

The use of the dream in the treatment of homosexuality is as fruitful as the utilization of dream analysis in psychoanalysis in general. Dr. Gershman has presented us with some interesting concepts concerning homosexuality, in general, and dream analysis, in particular, and in the course of doing this he has defied many sacred cows of analyses. He uses the dream as a diagnostic, prognostic, therapeutic and curative index. The use of the dream to evaluate the homosexual status, from its genesis to its psychoanalytic termination, is an interesting study both in treatment and technique.

Dr. Gershman contends that the homosexual feels defective in his maleness or femaleness. Homosexuality consists of sexual symptoms produced by underlying illness which has its roots in gender identity problems. Homosexuality is seen as a reparativo ritual process which fuses two similar sexual genders in order to restore adequacy to an inadequate sexual gender. In other words, the inference is that since the homosexual feels himself to be a half man, for example, he attempts to join in a homosexual union with another similar half man in order to achieve the feeling of totality as a whole man. Thus, from Dr. Gershman's apparent mathematical homosexual equation, one half plus one half could equal one. However, to coin a less abstract mathematical formula which we could call the “PRAD” principal, representing the words “Paradoxical,” “Reciprocal,” “Additive,” “Diminution,” one half plus one half in this instance will equal less than one half. Two half-sick people joining together in this manner often produce much sicker individuals with greater self-hate and other problems. To pursue this analogy further, one half to the n^th power equals a prog