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Marcondes thesis is that paranoid ideas in both sexes are not a defense against homosexuality but rather a defense against passive sexual attitudes toward either sexual object.
The problem, as Marcondes sees it, is found in the struggle that both sexes undergo against the passive sexual rôle in which they both begin life. When, in the boy, the change to an active attitude is inhibited he stays in, or returns to, a passive attitude toward both his mother and father. While passivity to father (men) is usually the presenting attitude in paranoia because 'the critical moment (in the passivity-activity conflict) took place during the Oedipal phase', nevertheless the boy's passive attitude toward mother from the preOedipal phase lies in the background, and indeed persecution by women is sometimes found in the presenting symptoms.
That feminine persecutors are more frequent in the girl (though nearly always veiled by a masculine persecutor) despite her normally passive attitude toward father in the Oedipal phase, is due, according to Marcondes, to the fact that the preOedipal phase is much longer than that of boys 'and therefore much more recent'. 'Paranoic disturbances', the author concludes, 'are a special form of defense against passivity'.