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Despite Freud's oft-quoted letter to the concerned mother of a homosexual son (a humane and liberal statement), psychoanalysts who followed him managed to undermine his enlightened position by substituting a view of homosexuality as a pathological outcome of faulty development. Psychoanalysis evolved a position in which homosexual patients were viewed as unanalyzable unless they were able, through the exploration and resolution of unconscious oedipal conflicts, to become heterosexual in their orientation. The insistence in the United States on the pathological nature of homosexuality has faded under the influence of a number of changes in our society, but the association of homosexuality with both oedipal and preoedipal pathology persists both here and in other parts of the world. This book, by two psychoanalysts who have consistently made contributions to the psychoanalytic literature on homosexuality, is an important step toward making psychoanalysis again relevant to the study of sexual orientation. As such, and to ensure the correction of past errors, it should be required reading for analysts everywhere.
Richard Friedman and Jennifer Downey, drawing on years of work, explore here how psychoanalysis became a center for homophobic thinking and the misunderstanding of homosexuality. In their opinion, this misapplication of psychoanalysis resulted from a combination of unquestioned acceptance of classical theory, with its overemphasis on the oedipal determination of adult sexuality, and an authoritarian endorsement of homophobic beliefs. While the authors note that many of the incorrect assertions about homosexuality coming from psychoanalytic sources have been replaced by more accurate information, they believe that an examinat