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In the 35 years since homosexuality was removed as a major diagnosis from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a substantial literature has emerged that addresses the psychotherapeutic facilitation of healthy gay identity development and meaningful living as a self-respecting gay or lesbian person (Cohler & Galatzer-Levy 2000; Ritter & Terndrup 2002; Bieschke, Perez & DeBord 2006). After a stubborn tradition of overt pathologizing and still lingering controversy (Isay 1996), such notable psychoanalytic periodicals as the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association have in recent years responded to these new trends in care by providing space for more humane perspectives on homosexual love (e.g., Auchincloss & Vaughan 2001; Feldman 2002; Roughton 2002a, 2002b; Phillips 2003; Lingiardi & Capozzi 2004). Prominent among the many receptive venues for this approach is the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health, which has published continuously since 1989. Thus, it would seem quite appropriate that what is arguably the world's pre-eminent Jungian periodical, the Journal of Analytical Psychology (JAP) should by this point in time have also published various relevant contributions to this expanding effort. However, in actuality, the JAP was still presenting papers as recently as 1988, some 15 years after the DSM's adjustment, describing homosexuality as a perversion, including one by its own founding editor, Michael Fordham (1988; see also Wisdom 1988). Subsequently, beside a quirky discussion by C.T. Frey-Wehrlin in 1992 on homosexual archetypal patterns in mentoring relationships, the JAP did not print a single full-length paper focusing on homosexuality for 18 years, until suddenly in 2006 an article appeared by Barry Miller on ‘The analysis of the homoerotic and the pursuit of meaning’, disturbing aspects of which I will discuss below, followed since by two more years of such silence.
As the