A Homosexual Turns to Women

Most men turn to women, sooner or later, and in that regard my patient is unexceptional. Common as it is, however, the process seldom comes into clinical view, and so his particular experience of it may throw general light, even though (or perhaps, just because) it was more delayed and tortuous than usual. He achieved sexual intercourse with a woman when he was 21; for a few months earlier, he was a psychiatric patient; and before that, he had struggled since puberty against submerging amongst those who cannot turn to women - the minority we call homosexual.

My theme is how the female genitalia affected him, what his reactions were to intercourse, and why. For the purpose, I shall only require fragments of his life history and of the phase of psychotherapy before he managed coitus; most details, consequently, are omitted. In fact, it was only after the great event that my dealings with him began, since his treatment until then was conducted by my registrar at the time.

In the first place, he came to be a psychiatric patient because of the disastrous effects of attempts at heterosexuality. He found himself impotent; underwent a religious conversion which, for a while, safely prohibited further sexual adventures; grew attached to a girl whom he also brought to the Lord and whom, after barely three weeks, he resolved to marry; and, with that, psychotic symptoms overtook him in real earnest. Initially, he had gone for reassurance to his doctor and persuaded him frequently to examine his genitalia and once to obtain a semen analysis; later, when he began to be oppressed by sneers about homosexuality which friends seemed to be making, or perhaps Satan, he was referred for psychotherapy.

He was 20, a student, good-looking, and a nationally known athlete. He had the classic background for homosexuality - no memory of a father, a mother the widow of a short-lived marriage to a man 25 years her senior, and a steady homosexual relationship over three years in boyhood with a lodge