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There are two major reasons why the appearance of two volumes on “The Homosexualities” edited by Charles Socarides and Vamik Volkan will be of great interest to psychoanalytic clinicians and theoreticians who are concerned with same-sex object choice. The first is the informativeness of Socarides' ideas over the past 35 years on the development and treatment of homosexuality. The second is the relationship these views have to more recent ideas and approaches formulated by those who dissent from traditional psychoanalytic discourse on the subject.
The volume, which is under review here, The Homosexualities and the Therapeutic Process is a collection of 14 articles, and an introduction. It seeks to demonstrate both the unity and variety of clinical approaches to homosexuality that are informed by Socarides' theoretical and clinical work, most notably in The Preoedipal Origin and Psychoanalytic Therapy of Sexual Perversions . In a real sense, then, we may consider these two volumes as articulating a position and defining a set of attitudes that might well be called “The School of Socarides.”
Almost all of the contributors to this volume accept Socarides' classification of the homosexualities, his understanding of their development, and his recommendations for their treatment. According to Socarides, the varieties of homosexual behaviors and psychic structures constitute a series composed of three distinct pathological conditions. The first is an oedipal variety, essentially neurotic in nature, which represents a regression (which is reversible in treatment) from the positive to the negative oedipal stance. The second, a borderline condition further divided into two subcategories, results from a failure to have successfully negotiated the separation-individuation phase of development. The third, which he calls “schizohomosexuality,” is a psychotic condition, in which homosexuality represents a frantic and disorganized attempt to salvage some form of object relatedness. In