Glen O. Gabbard's Review of The Crying Game

Dear Sir,

Gabbard restates Robert Stoller's words that heterosexuality is no more natural or normal than homosexuality. The probable truth of these words is being demonstrated by modern research and clinical findings. However, there is little evidence to demonstrate Gabbard's contention, as he is reminded by the film, ‘that we are all on shaky ground when it comes to our sexual identities and preferences’ (my italics). I have not found this to be so in my own work in analysis with the large majority of patients over the past nearly forty years, or in my supervision of patients of a number of clinical associates (candidates). The vast majority of patients have been pretty firm in their basic sexual identities and preferences.

Gabbard repeats another long-standing unproven contention regarding children: that during the so-called pre-oedipal phase the recognition of anatomical gender differences occurs, which ‘signals a period of mourning that accompanies the realization that gender entail limits. For the boy child, it may also trigger anxiety that his genitals may be vulnerable’ (commonly summarised as ‘castration anxiety’ during the so called oedipal phase, my italics).

In my own years of research into infancy and early childhood at the Cedars/Sinai Medical Center of Los Angeles, or in my many years of work in child analysis, I did not commonly find a period of anxiety, mourning, or depression during those same so called ‘oedipal’ years relating to their genitals, except in a small minority of children wherein possible explanations for such reactions were variable.

I am still looking for any substantive research done by psychoanalysts or researchers outside of psychoanalysis that demonstrates that the majority of children go through a period of anxiety or depression related to the so-called Oedipal period, and I have written about my questions on this matter.

About thirty years ago I presented to Robert Stoller my analysis of a child with a gender identity disorder a