Editors' Introduction

In its first half-century psychoanalysis was a brand new science. The body of data was as yet relatively sparse. Inevitably, then, psychoanalysis was guided, in its practical and clinical applications, more by theoretical axiom than by empirical evidence. The fields of psychoanalytic education and technique in particular were governed as much by authoritative axiom as by evidence. The axiomatic principles all seemed logical and intuitively correct at the time, as in this partial list.

(1) Adolescents cannot be analyzed because their psychic structure is unformed and in turmoil, (2) pregnant women are unreachable by analysis because they are narcissistically preoccupied with their bodies, (3) patients treated in psychotherapy cannot thereafter be analyzed by the same therapist because the transference will have been irremediably compromised, (4) patients with an ongoing perversion of any sort are not accessible to analysis because the gratification provided by the perverse orgasm forms an insuperable resistance, (5) psychoactive medication and psychoanalysis are fundamentally incompatible, (6) homosexuals cannot be trained as analysts because their homosexuality renders them unanalyzable and also because their countertransference renders them incapable of analyzing either homosexual or heterosexual patients.

One by one, these axioms have faded away as they have been proven to be false by solid evidence gradually accumulated by the analytic profession. However, in the case of homosexuality a unique situation has developed. As one set of axioms about homosexuality has been submerged by the evidence, another set of equally unproven axioms about homosexuality has risen to take its place. The new axiomatic principles are supported, in lieu of evidence, by intense ideological fervor, particularly that generated by the postmodern movement characterized as Political Correctness. The new set of axioms affirm (in brief) that homosexuality is a variation of “normal” human sexuali