You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In recent years many psychoanalytic concepts that had once been generally accepted are being critically reevaluated. Diverse social pressures from outside psychoanalysis have been only partially responsible for this change. The work of Daniel Stern, for example, or Robert Holt, or Haartvig Dahl, to name only a few serious contributors from within the field all provide impetus for change. Many contemporary psychoanalytic clinicians, researchers, and theoreticians have felt constrained by psychoanalytic assumptions that have failed to meet standards for validity in an increasingly complex world.
Like other subspecialties, the area of sexual orientation has felt the pressure to change. Certain characteristics of this pressure are shared with other areas of analysis and certain features are unique to this particular field. The boundary between psychoanalytic psychology, for example and gay activism is unique. The modern consumer of information pertaining to clinical aspects of sexual orientation is usually confronted by a dilemma. To what degree is the tone of a publication influenced by recent research and scholarship, and to what degree is it influenced by ideological pressure; in short by so called “political correctness”?
Of course, political correctness has been a problem in psychoanalysis since its inception. The nature of the problem as it pertains to sexual orientation has shifted over the years. During the post World War II years, had the term “political correctness” been in vogue, it would have been used to connote an authoritarian, antiempirical, antiresearch stance that led to widespread criticism that psychoanalysis