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In Female Homosexuality: Choice Without Volition, Elaine Siegel makes her theoretical lineage and clinical goals explicit from the outset; she dedicates the book to Charles Socarides, MD, and credits her “immersal in and application of” his work with the fact that “some of [her] patients were able to become heterosexual” (p. xiv). Socarides is best known for his theories about developmental deficits in male homosexuals and for his ardent work in the 1970s to persuade the American Psychiatric Association to maintain homosexuality as a psychiatric diagnosis. Siegel applies his schematization of male homosexuality to female homosexuals, with a twist. She argues that whereas male homosexuals tend to overvalue their genitals, female homosexuals have failed to “take full possession of their vaginas” (p. 22), a failure that both she (p. 22) and Theodore L. Dorpat (p. xv) in his introduction refer to as a “calamity.” The bulk of the book consists of elaborate case presentations of eight of Siegel's analysands, preceded and followed by several theoretical chapters, one of which describes Siegel's “psychoanalytic armamentarium” (p. 32).
Like Socardies, Siegel regards homosexuality as evidence of a developmental arrest. The homosexual woman, she maintains, has failed to incorporate her vagina into her self-representation. Her sexual relationships with women in adulthood reflect an attempt to consolidate her female body image by identifying with the partner's genitals. Implicit in this explanation is the idea that a sexual relationship between two women is necessarily narcissistic. That is, a woman is not enjoyed, cherished, or chosen for her intrinsic attributes; rather, her body is made use of to correct a psychological defect in her partner.
The homosexual woman's failure “to traverse the usual developmental