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Dear Sirs,
Jean Bergeret (2002) discards homosexuality as incorrect both conceptually and linguistically. He replaces it with his conceptualisation of homoeroticism and narcissistic eroticism and invites a discussion among psychoanalysts. Unfortunately, Bergeret's article amounts to a giant leap backward into old beliefs that psychoanalysts in the United States long ago recognised as based on seriously flawed assumptions. Repackaging them in French psychoanalytic thinking does not confer any greater validity.
Due to space limitations, I shall only comment here on a few major differences, leaving it to others to carry the discussion further. True sexuality is by definition heterosexual, according to Bergeret, who ‘emphatically insist[s] on the narcissistic nature of the erotic satisfaction sought by the homophile’. The libido of ‘homophiles’ has not evolved beyond the narcissistic-phallic stage; and their objects are therefore narcissistic, not sexual. ‘This form of pleasure, which can be very intense, does not, however, constitute a