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The genesis of homosexuality is attributed by many members of the psychoanalytic school to an early and intense fixation, in the case of boys, upon the mother, in the sense of the Oedipus complex, and in girls, upon the father. The theory is evidently based upon the fact that the histories of homosexual adults frequently indicate that there was manifested in the childhood of the individual a strong erotic attachment to one parent.
Freud1 has maintained that at the same time that the young boy identifies himself with his father, taking the father as his ideal, he has begun to develop an “object—cathexis” toward his mother, according to the “anaclitic” type, i.e.,“he chooses as his first sexual object the same person who has satisfied his early nonsexual needs.” The identification with the father and the object cathexis toward the mother exist side by side without interference for a time, and then, because of“the irresistible advance towards a unification of mental life, they come together at last, and the normal Oedipus complex originates from their confluence.” The identification with the father then is substituted by the wish to replace the father in regard to the mother.
At puberty, it is maintained, there is normally a transfer of the affections from the mother to other female individuals, since the erotic love of the mother can no longer continue to develop consciously. But, according to Freud,2 the homosexual does not abandon the mother, but represses his love for her by identifying himself with her. He then“looks about for objects (of his own sex) which can replace his ego for him, and on which he can bestow such love and care as he has experienced from his mother” In his study of Leonardo da Vinci,3 Freud points out that the boy is guided in