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Dear Sirs,
Bergeret completely missed the point of my argument. I did not accuse him of being morally judgemental; rather, I raised specific questions about the scientific validity of his theoretical and clinical positions.
I referred to gay psychoanalytic candidates and training analysts not to open a political discussion, but to question Bergeret's theory as applied to homosexual individuals who manifest securely differentiated self and object relationships and who function at a high level of psychological maturity. By what evidence—not theory, but evidence—does he proclaim that their affective and relational objects can only be narcissistic ones?
Bergeret insists that he does not consider ‘all homophiles’ to be sick; but what is he saying when he asserts that ‘the homophile’ does not experience true object love and when his four categories of homoeroticism span the spectrum of pathology from ‘developmental block’ to ‘progressive deterioration of a psychotic structure’?
By ignoring such challenges to his theory, Bergeret leaves us to surmise that he finds it unthinkable that his views might be skewed by heterosexist bias or that there might be better explanations from a different psychoanalytic perspective.