Rethinking Psychoanalysis and Homosexualities

The issue of same-gender sexual identity has challenged our understanding of psychological development and psychological intervention throughout the century just past and continues to provoke discussion in the century upon us. Over the past three decades, psychoanalysis advanced toward a contemporary perspective, which holds that the dynamics of sexual orientation must be an important element of the psychoanalytic process, but must be approached without prejudice regarding the outcome of analytic exploration of wish and desire. Taken together, the essays in Rethinking Psychoanalysis and the Homosexualities, a thematic volume of The Annual of Psychoanalysis provide a developmentally grounded and clinically consequential enlargement of this basic premise. The result is a timely overview of contemporary approaches to the study of sexual orientation within psychoanalysis that highlights issues salient to clinical work with lesbian and gay patients. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum's opening essay, which delineates the complex interplay between history and the understanding of desire, sets the stage for interpretive commentaries framed by recent psychoanalytic history: Schafer and Bergmann each reflect on the changing understanding of homosexuality within contemporary psychoanalysis; Jack Drescher explores the treatment implications of contemporary understandings of sexual orientation; and Richard Friedman illuminates the foundational childhood experiences that lead a person to think of him- or herself as gay or lesbian. A Section on "Changing Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Homosexuality" presents Roughton's "Two Analyses of a Gay Man," which thoughtfully explores Roughton's divergent clinical perspective on same-gender desire separated by a decade of social and political change. The section on "The Meaning of Sexualization in Clinical Psychoanalysis" demonstrates the importance of psychoanalytic study of same-gender desire and sexual orientation for analyst and analysand alike. Philips considers the analyst's own sexual identity as a factor shaping the analysand's experience of sexuality, whereas Shelby, Lynch, Roughton, and Young-Bruehl, from their various perspectives, address the problem of stigma and prejudice as they distort same-gender desire and same-gender sexual identity. Two concluding sections of the book explore the implications of a clinical psychoanalytic perspective for the study of gay and lesbian lives. Among the high points: Martin's clinical report of an enactment with a lesbian analysand that resulted in therapeutic stalemate; Keefer's and Reene's consideration of the developmental dynamics of lesbian identity; Galatzer-Levy's and Cohler's review of issues related to disclosure of a gay or lesbian identity across the adolescent and adult life cycles; and Grossman's discussion of the impact of social and political change on the very manner in which sexual orientation is understood within psychoanalysis. Timely and essential reading for all mental health professionals, Rethinking Psychoanalysis and the Homosexualitiesunderscores the profound distance traversed by psychoanalysis in arriving at its contemporary understandings of gender, sexual identity, and sexual desire.Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis Staff is the author of 'Rethinking Psychoanalysis and Homosexualities' with ISBN 9780881633665 and ISBN 0881633666.