Discussion of Ralph Roughton's Chapter

I am going to do Ben's third analysis, with the benefit of hindsight. The analysis is unusual, not only because of its brevity. I try to do it as though I were Ralph Roughton, a male analyst, and elicited the same kind of transference he did, that is, an upsurge of Ben's intense unconscious needs and fears, expectations and hopes, disappointment, anger, and shame experienced primarily with the analyst as childhood father.1 I shall try to understand Ben's larval transference as it emerges in several hours in the second month of treatment and briefly mention the “beautiful man” and “hungry guy” transference in the second year of the analysis. I also give some examples of my idea of trial interpretations.2 First some introductory:

I share Roughton's belief that we can move psychoanalysis toward what he means by a “good theory,” that is, a theory that does not continue to pathologize homosexuality. My agenda is even more ambitious than his: I want to enlarge our theoretical and interpretive framework to overcome the psychoanalytic blind spots that lead to pathologizing in general and prevent us from seeing the