Antihomosexuality, Bad Faith, and Psychoanalysis: Response to Commentaries

Joanna Ryan, in “Reflections on Disorienting Sexuality,” writes about the differences between antihomosexuality in Britain and the United States and wonders about the process of change. I would like to take this opportunity to comment on my experiences with antihomosexuality in the psychoanalytic community, why I think the idea of multiple identifications is important, and how I think change will occur. In Disorienting Sexuality I tried to focus on unconscious processes to explain antihomosexuality. Here instead, using the concept of bad faith1, I want to briefly focus on consciousness. When a person lies to others, the liar is in fact in complete possession of the truth and chooses to hide it from others; the intent is to deceive. Bad faith, however, is a lie to oneself. While the lie creates a duality between the liar and the other, in bad faith there is no distinction between the liar and the one to whom one is lying.2 Bad faith is not a “state” one is in, rather it is a commitment to a way of being, usually supported by a world view. Typically acts, feelings, or emotions that cause the conflict inherent in bad faith to emerge are at best not sufficiently attended to or typically dismissed as themselves a lie or due to the aggression on the part of the other.