The clinical material presented here confirms Freud's views that there is nothing specific about the psychological factors to be found in cases of male homosexuality. The material also suggests that the 'masculine protest' of homosexual patients has a defensive function protecting them from an underlying passive femininity of which they are afraid. In this they differ in no way from certain patients suffering from potency difficulties. It is unlikely that there is a specific 'homosexual ego'. The more disturbed the early childhood experiences the more abnormal will the ego be, and this need not be accompanied by manifest masculinity. It is equally possible, as has been seen, for homosexuality to occur in the presence of a relatively intact ego.