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In introducing the topic of bisexuality, Henry Smith, chair and moderator of the panel, outlined the three types of characteristics that Freud believed accounted for object choice. First are the “physical, sexual characteristics,” whether the person is perceived as man or woman. Second are the “mental, sexual characteristics,” which involve the perceived masculinity or femininity of the person. Third is object choice or sexual orientation of the individual. Smith emphasized that these characteristics are independent variables and present themselves in a complex variety of permutations and combinations within every individual. This, according to Smith, is reflected in Freud's conception of universal bisexuality.
Smith addressed the confusion that the term bisexuality holds for psychoanalysts due to the diversity of meanings assigned to it. Bisexuality can refer to (1) the mixture of unconscious gender identifications within everyone; (2) the fact that every sexual object choice will unconsciously remind us of both male and female figures from our past; (3) the overt mixture of masculine and feminine traits that can be observed in any individual; and (4) the orientation and behavior of a person who is sexually attracted to and engages in sexual relations with members of both sexes.
Recognizing that the question of pathology has impeded psychoanalytic understanding of bisexual object choice, Smith drew on the work of Nancy Chodorow, who has argued that heterosexuality evolves developmentally through compromise formations and should be viewed in the same way we view homosexuality. Smith emphasized the importance of challenging our conceptions of normality: “as soon as we break down the phenomenon of sexual orientation into the elements that we