The Ego and the Object of the Homosexual1

From the very beginning, it has been the lot of psycho-analysis seriously to threaten well established, almost axiomatic concepts and ideas. One of the first of such inroads was made by Freud when he established what he called the fluidity of sexual aims and objects. To be sure, in so doing he simply surveyed the well-known data on perversion, and in this way attained one of the attributes of genius: he looked with a new perspective at a familiar segment of reality.

Once the idea of the fixity of a sexual object was thus undermined, it seemed natural to apply this new insight to the problem of homosexuality—a most striking variation of object choice. Indeed it was again Freud who introduced the concept of the narcissistic object; and this proved particularly helpful to the understanding of homosexuality. It became clear that whatever other functions the sexual object had for the homosexual, it most certainly served as the image of his own self as well.

In my own clinical experience I was early fascinated by the variation in object choice. The study of psychotics and latent psychotics was supplemented by an intensive study of homosexuals, some of whom I was able to observe and to treat for long periods of time.

In the course of the years, it became clear to me that the problem of object choice and object relations was essential to the understanding of homosexuality. It was only logical to assume—and clinical experience has borne this out—that the problem was closely related to another most relevant question, one which has not been given much attention in literature, to wit, the total personality or the ego of the homosexual.

It is not accidental, to be sure, that there are some deep affinities between homosexuals and the whole schizophrenic group; affinities based, in my opinion, on their analogous psychic structure in general, and in particular on many infantile qualities in the libidinal organization as well as on certain primitive features within the ego.

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