A Focus on Male Homosexuality in Psychoanalytic Literature

Abstract

Homosexuality has long been classified by many authors as a form of psychic immaturity. Today, it is widely accepted that homosexuality is not by definition a pathological development. In this article, I will focus on male homosexuality because I have been working with homosexual men for quite some time. In the first part, we will see that the Freudian and post-Freudian authors examined have largely emphasized the narcissistic failings of male homosexuals. In the Jungian corpus, which also serves as a reference, the homosexual is frequently considered as an individual whose relationship to his inner feminine is the result of a fusional identification with his mother. The abstract concepts of anima/animus have done little to remove homosexuality from the category of identity disorders. In the second part, I assume the possible existence of a homosexual instinct which everyone is confronted with and which would manifest itself in specific conditions. Certainly, no distinction between men and women should be made regarding my hypothesis of a homosexual instinct. However, from a scientific point of view, it has been impossible for me to prove that such an instinct really exists.