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In this communication I wish to call attention to a transference manifestation in male homosexuals which to the best of my knowledge has not been previously reported in the analytic literature.
The phenomenon is this. Male homosexuals in therapy with me have rarely expressed any homosexual feelings about the therapist, who is another male. Some of these patients have been highly promiscuous. They would pick men up in the street, or at bars, or other meeting places. In one case the number of male partners in the course of time ran into the hundreds. Yet the analyst almost never became a target for the homosexual libido.
This reaction is in marked contrast to that of heterosexual men. The preponderant majority of these, at some point in the analysis, would develop an overt homosexual transference, with a variety of open homosexual fantasies. Some of these transference reactions would last for years, even though the patient never felt the urge, or at least could control the urge, to act them out with some other man outside the analysis.
Since the writer is only reporting his own experience, the amount of case material is small and perhaps atypical. In all, over the past ten years I have treated seven overt homosexuals. Of these, five were minimally bisexual, in that they had had one relationship with a woman involving heterosexual experience. All of these however at the beginning of analysis thought of themselves as basically homosexual.
Of the seven patients, six were in analysis, one in psychotherapy. One of these cases has been reported in detail elsewhere. 3 There was thus ample opportunity for the release of homosexual fantasies, if these appeared in the associations.