“Homophobia: Analysis of a ‘Permissible’ Prejudice” was the best-attended public forum at the Fall Meeting of the American, with more than 800 participants. The topic was explored from a religious, cultural, organizational, and psychodynamic point of view.
The Reverend Peter Gomes, Plummer Professor of Morals at Harvard University, put it squarely when he said, “Psychoanalysis and religion have a great deal to answer for.” A conservative Protestant-Christian brand of religion is predominant in this country, and it started with the Pilgrims. Most strong convictions contain strong prejudice. Anti-gay bigotry has been derived from a particular reading of the Bible and a view of the writings of St. Paul as normative. A clever browser can always find something in the Bible to justify any prejudice. The scriptures also can be read to sanction a secondary role for women, racial bias, slavery, and anti-Semitism.
Gomes suggested looking for over-arching principles of Christianity. Any and all of us are created in the image of God. There are no exclusive divisions. Jesus said that the greatest commandment was, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In this view, people of all sexual orientations are fully acceptable to God. A comment from the floor suggested that Jesus might come back today within our deepest prejudices, possibly as a gay man.
Looking at homophobia from a cultural point of view, there has been an 8 percent increase in hate crimes based on sexual orientation in the last year, while other categories of violent crimes have decreased. Half of all gay men and lesbians have been threatened with violence, and 80 percent have been verbally harassed. Hate crimes against gays and lesbians often feature gruesome violence and sexual degradation or mutilation. Perpetrators are usually young men, often operating in packs. A classic justification is, “He came on to me.”
Photo by Mervin S. Stewart
Alan Hevesi, comptroller of New York City and an openly gay man, noted that it is not legally permissible to discriminate based on race, gender or disability, but it is permissible to discriminate based on sexual preference. For example, sexual preference discrimination is legal in New York state but not in New York City.
The American Psychoanalytic Association, until recently, has been part of the problem. While Freud clearly stated in 1935 that he did not think of homosexuality as an illness, the mainstream psychoanalytic thinking in this country reflected the generally conservative and moral culture. Homosexuality, it was taught, resulted from a pathological developmental arrest. Ralph Roughton, a training analyst from Atlanta, believes that this theory resulted from use of case studies that emphasized pathology. It was not recognized how cultural prejudice can shape and cause pathology. There was little recognition among psychoanalysts of the normative culture of gay and lesbian people.
In the 1950s and '60s, there was zeal for “converting” homosexuals, which is still advocated by a small minority of analysts and the religious right. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association dropped homosexuality as a diagnosis. In the 1980s, analyst Richard Isay started to pressure the American for political change. In 1991, the American adopted a nondiscrimination statement, and a year later amended it to include training and supervising analysts. In 1992, under Roughton's leadership, the American formed a Committee on Homosexual Issues. At that time, there were only three openly gay candidates and no openly gay training analysts.
In the forum Roughton spoke of his own journey. He completed two failed analyses attempting to get rid of homosexual desires. He decided to come out two years ago. Currently, there are more than forty openly gay candidates and two openly gay training analysts. The committee is sponsoring a literature review on the psychoanalytic treatment of gays and lesbians. In 1997, the American endorsed the view that the state should not bar civil marriages between same-sex partners. Roughton believes that the American's position in the past has caused real harm. Training has been denied, and biased theories have buttressed social prejudice and promoted biased treatment goals.
The term “homophobia” was coined in 1972. A forum participant pointed out that homophobia is not entirely accurate as a clinical term, since homophobic attitudes are a mixture of fear, avoidance, and active hate. Nancy Chodorow, a psychoanalyst and professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, feels that homophobia is really a counterphobia. She explained that it fits two cultural needs: the need for men to feel powerful and the need for masculinity to be carefully protected. In our culture, the Oedipal boy must both separate from his mother and renounce his feminine identity. Masculinity becomes a compromise formation, needing to defend against the dangers of merging with the female and being castrated by the male.
Robert S. White, M.D., is a member of the Western New England Psychoanalytic Society and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale University.
The boy must identify with the idealized aggressive father without loving him. Homoerotic feelings must be denied. The male homosexual threatens both the need for masculine and the need not to be female. For the homophobic male, a rigid splitting must occur, with the perceived feminine and weak aspects of the personality projected outward onto the homosexual, to be attacked and denigrated.
Chodorow believes that psychoanalysis has yet to seriously investigate masculinity and heterosexuality as a developmental issue. She posits a wide range of both heterosexualities and homosexualities. A forum participant asked about the role of one-parent homes in forming a homosexual identity. Chodorow felt that gender identifications are very complex. A child can identify with masculine and feminine traits in either parent or use the extended family — teachers, family friends, etc. — as identificatory objects.
Another question from the floor concerned the sexual orientation of the therapist. Is an openly gay therapist important in the treatment of the gay patient? The consensus of the panel was that it was important to help the patient develop a positive sense of gender identity, to know normative aspects of gay life, and to be humble about what the therapist doesn't know.