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This short clinical paper was presented at the First International Congress of Analytical Psychology in July 1958. It should be emphasized that the analysis from which the thesis is drawn was concluded some years before and that I had no inkling of Layard's thinking on this subject, or he of mine, until the approach of the Congress led us to discuss the matter a few weeks before the meeting (Layard, 1959). This paper focuses upon the significance of the latent homosexual orientation for symptom-formation, its influence upon the transference, and in particular on the part it plays in the therapeutic process.
The patient was in his late twenties when he first became overtly ill. He had been aware from his late teens of difficulty in relating to women, and had failed in his only attempt at sexual intercourse. For some months he had maintained a romantic interest in a woman who appeared to him as gifted, artistic, and pure, but on discovering that she was ill-content with this role and wanted a man and a lover, he fled from the relationship, became mildly depressed, and developed phobic symptoms. Soon these had increased until he was in a state of almost perpetual panic. He was referred to an outpatient clinic; as he sat in the waiting-room the psychiatrist he was due to see showed himself in the corridor—a large, masculine, and rather stern figure in appearance—and my patient fled from the hospital, afterwards writing a letter of abject apology, and consequently being admitted to a neurosis ward for a few months. It was his fear of returning to the outside world, although his panic had diminished, that led to his referral to me.