Response

The invitation to comment on the place of homosexuality in current psychoanalytic theory, practice, and training stimulated recall of an experience I had thirty years ago, following my graduation from the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Institute. The experience highlights sharp contrasts between past and current thinking and practices in a number of areas of concern to psychoanalysts, particularly within the American Psychoanalytic Association. Questions about the etiology and place of homosexuality were resolved then, as well as now, by reference to untested assumptions.

The situation I recalled involved a discussion of a report of my first supervised case, in treatment from 1962 to 1966. I wrote the report for a seminar in 1968. Dr. Maurits Katan, a training analyst at the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Institute, was discussant. Both the report and the discussion were later presented at a regional meeting and published (Katan, 1970; Rosenbaum, 1970).

Nearly thirty years later, in 1997, I taught a class in the second year of the curriculum of the same Institute where I am now a training analyst. In this class, we studied reports candidates wrote of their supervised treatments. The exercise was part of an effort to create an environment where writing skills could develop. The goal was to teach a method of writing about the treatment process. As there was no candidate's report available to discuss, I offered the report I had written for the 1968 seminar. In preparation for the class, I wrote and circulated in advance a critique of my earlier report. I have extracted the following from the 1997 critique.

Katan's discussion of my case report typified his approach to clinical teaching. He reconstructed childhood events from the adult patient's symptoms and the clinical interaction, often using only a