Premised on the observation that the HIV epidemic has occasioned an increase in both the prevalence and the virulence of homophobic ideation, feeling, and action, this paper surveys some of the ways in which psychoanalytic theory has been widely used in the emerging extraclinical literature on this problem. The problem has been barely addressed in the clinical literature, however, a gap that is discussed. The paper then proceeds, by way of a clinical vignette and a critical examination of some central texts of Freud, to present a clinical/theoretical perspective on homophobia. This perspective leans on Brian Bird's work on prejudice.