Introduction to Panel on Disturbances of Male and Female Identity as Met with in Psychoanalytic Practice

It is my intention to collect and examine psychoanalytic experience in observing the evolution of those transference reactions, the repetitive character of which indicates earlier states of sexual identity. These transference reactions could then be evaluated with a view to estimating their significance for later development of the sexual role and of sexual identity. If we take into account the cases in which there is a disturbance of sexual identity, the damage to the personality as a whole not being such that a diagnosis of psychotic development would be necessary, we are faced with a large number of clinical pictures. It is not easy to discern what they have in common.

As I have been given the task of opening the discussion and of circumscribing the topic, I intend to elucidate the problem of disturbances of sexual identity by speaking about my observations in analyses of manifest homosexuals. The clinical picture of homosexuality is pathogenetically heterogeneous. That which finally leads to a definite sexual role is grounded in manifold constellations and configurations. Psychoanalysis has adopted certain views and concepts which enable us to understand the various possibilities which can lead to a homosexual object choice.

On the basis of my own observations I wish to demonstrate how much evidence there is to show that, in the case of homosexuals, an unevenness of progression rate between developmental lines (Anna Freud) has brought about disturbances of sexual identity. I think that ego and drive development proceed at different speeds in the late preoedipal phase. Whereas magical thinking persists in the area of ego development, accelerated drive development produces lack of control in matters of sex and aggression, the result being an insufficient integration of the personality. My opinion is that, where homosexuals are concerned, such disharmony between developmental lines can be assumed because these patients experience practically every kind of se