Split-off Male and Female Elements Found Clinically in Men and Women: Theoretical Inferences

There is nothing new either inside or outside psychoanalysis in the idea that men and women have a “predisposition toward bisexuality.”

I try here to use what I have learned about bisexuality from analyses that have gone step by step toward a certain point and have focused on one detail. No attempt will be made here to trace the steps by which an analysis comes to this kind of material. It can be said that a great deal of work usually has had to be done before this type of material has become significant with priority. It is difficult to see how all this preliminary work can be avoided. The slowness of the analytic process is a manifestation of a defense that every analyst must respect, as we respect all defenses. While it is the patient who is all the time teaching the analyst, the analyst should be able to know, theoretically, about the matters that concern the deepest or most central features of personality; else he may fail to recognize and to meet new demands on his understanding and technique when at long length the patient is able to bring deeply buried matters into the content of the transference, thereby affording opportunity for mutative interpretation. The analyst, by interpreting, shows how much and how little of the patient's communication he is able to receive.