The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 24, 1955, No. 4: Lawrence C. Kolb and Adelaide M. Johnson. Aetiology and Therapy of Overt Homosexuality.'

This is a further study by Johnson and her coworkers of the rôle of unconscious instigation by the parents in the acting out of their children. Four cases of adult male homosexuality are described. The patients' mothers had behaved to them in an over-seductive way, at the same time frustrating their heterosexual drives and sanctioning homosexual ones. The fathers had failed to protect their sons against their mother, often partly owing to absence from home. The main aetiological agent was a hostile identification with the mother.

In treatment the therapist's passivity may be interpreted by such patients as a repetition of the mother's permission for homosexuality. When it is clear that the parent's seductiveness encouraged the patient, and a strong positive transference has been obtained, the therapist should forbid homosexual activity on pain of termination of treatment, explaining that the mother's acquiescence in this relief of tension cannot be repeated. This causes the patient to face the anxiety aroused by his hostility to the hated mother and allows the analyst to resolve it by interpretation in the transference.