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This is a rather exhaustive study of the hindrances in ego development underlying overt homosexuality in males. Bychowski presents extensive clinical data from two patients, both homosexuals, whom he analyzed. He summarizes his findings in the first patient by saying that, 'the strong narcissistic (and prenatal) cathexis remained unruffled from the very onset of development. Love objects after introjection were practically never given up. No complete identification in either way (masculine or feminine) was ever achieved; for each interfered with the other.' His 'feminine and passive ego-feeling' brought about 'by way of compensation, an increase of the primitive megalomaniac ego-feeling (the primitive superego)' and 'vice versa, the primitive superego drives a wedge even further into the passive ego, emphasizing its weakness'. Both ego feelings found 'perpetuation … in homosexual relationships with individuals who had become the objects of projection'. In submitting to men as a woman in fallatio 'he was expecting to share their greatness and to become like one of them'. 'On the other hand he was … still being suckled by the phallic mother' from whom he was deriving strength and trying 'to establish the lost identity'.
In the second patient 'self-defense by the ego in the form of spite and opposition caused a double distortion in its development. First, it hindered the normal process of introjection of male love objects and ideals; second, it prevented the normal development of virility and, in particular, its acknowledgement as such and its integration into the whole personality.' Furthermore, 'masculine love objects become transformed into idealized representatives of both inadequate parental imagos. They were supposed to provide the strength which his mother was unable to offer and the warm tenderness which the patient missed in his father.' Here again, as in the first patient, 'the split between the ego and the early ego-ideal of superior masculinity w