Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

DISCUSSION: Dr. George Wiedeman wondered if the author's fitting his cases into an Oedipal or preoedipal category was not too limiting a concept to encompass the complex intermingling of structural and genetic factors. Whereas preoedipal bisexual identifications and narcissism might predispose to homosexuality, its eventual appearance depends on the vicissitudes of ensuring Oedipal and postoedipal periods; e. g., could it really be shown that Y's difficulties were more related to preoedipal than to Oedipal identifications? A more precise clarification of structural influences is also needed when, as in Y's case, the superego is so severe, while in another of the cases presented it was apparently defective. The poorly structured ego of the homosexual must be considered with its primitive tendencies to denial, splitting, and faulty functioning in the areas of impulse control and synthesis. Dr. Wiedeman also commented on the confusion which might arise in restricting the description of homosexual object relations to either structural or libidinal concepts.

Dr. Gustav Bychowski felt that this paper emphasized the bisexual potentiality of the growing individual and the particular importance of early object and pre-object formation on subsequent psychosexual development and patterning. The relevance of his own work, in the area of early introjects and the early self-image, and its relationship to future homosexual object choices, was reviewed. Dr. Bychowski found confirmation in his own clinical experience for the types of bisexuality described, but noted that Y must also have had sufficient heterosexual libido to sustain his façade. In this connection he added to the superego mechanisms described in the paper by underscoring another, whereby the ego ideal representing an unconscious hypercathexis of the early self is projected onto male figures who become symbols of virility; in identification with these figures, homosexuals can bolster their self-esteem by recapt