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Meissner's paper purports to examine a chronically late patient. What emerges instead is an example of antigay analytic bias that is rarely acknowledged in this era of increasing acceptance of nonheterosexual orientation. Fr. Meissner described his use of coercive interpretations and collusion with the patient to suppress unwanted expressions of and activities around sexual orientation. This commentary briefly recapitulates the recent history of psychoanalysis' awakening over issues of sexual orientation and attempts by the profession's major figures to expand their understanding of human sexuality. The opportunity to reexamine an historical homophobic stance is used in this commentary to produce a more parsimonious interpretation of the patient's chronic lateness and other issues around contamination of the treatment by antigay analytic bias.
Only on rare occasions do articles appear in psychoanalytic journals that exude a taste of the unabashedly homophobic sensibility of psychoanalysis in the 1950s. One suspects that these sentiments still exist within our profession, but are kept out of print, a defensive action that insulates them from changes within psychoanalysis, as well as throughout significant sections of society. Homophobic sensibilities continue to find a voice in training institutes and psychoanalytic doctoral programs, but they are inexorably diminishing as psychoanalysis reconnects with the outside world and generational shifts occur in training personnel (Blechner, 1995; Drescher, 1995; Singer, 2002).
Those who deny the possibility of healthy same-sex feelings still claim that repressive forces of political pressure are at work, which have stifled honest debate on the pathological nature of homosexuality (reported in Lesser, 1995). To most other mental health practitioners, however, these changes represent progress toward ending the professional victimization of gay and lesbian patients, as well as the denigration of gay and lesbian analysts (Drescher