Heterosexuality

“ This peculiarity gives us an insight into the mentality of the Don Juan type, the desolute adventurer, and the Messalina type....
The flight away from homosexuality leads the individual to overstress his heterosexuality (with the formulation of compromises and the adoption of homosexual masks) but that seldom yields the satisfaction craved by the individual. ”

“ The congenital nature of homosexuality is displayed, not by the primary appearance of this mode of sensibility, but by the fact that when the puberal development takes place, the homosexual sentiments persist, and are not replaced by heterosexuality. ”

“ If this sublimation fails him he becomes neurotic, since no person overcomes completely his homosexual tendencies. Everyone carries within himself the predisposition to neurosis. The stronger the repression, the stronger is also the neurotic reaction which may be powerful enough in its extreme form to lead to paranoia. If the heterosexuality is repressed, homosexuality comes to the forefront. In the case of the homosexual, the repressed and incompletely conquered heterosexuality furnishes the disposition toward neurosis. ”

“ J. D’Emilio & E. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America 121 (2d ed. 1997) (“ The modern terms homosexuality and heterosexuality do not apply to an era that had not yet articulated these distinctions”) . ”

“ But since I have found that homosexuals are really bisexual neurotics who have repressed their heterosexuality, these men come to me more rarely and consult me chiefly when they get into conflict with the law. The solidarity of homosexuals and their will to hold on to the notion that their condition is inborn goes hand in hand. ”

“ While research has yet to confirm the hypothesis of structural peculiarities in the brain and genes of homosexuals, the specifics of the self-constitution process through practical experiences in a world subject to natural selection cannot be overlooked. Genetics tells us that the borderline between genders is less clear-cut than we assumed. Be this as it may, homosexuality takes place under a different set of biological and social expectations than do heterosexuality and other forms of sexuality. ”

“ The New York Times, Washington Times and Washington Post all report this morning that the American Psychiatric Association Convention in New Orleans today, Columbia University psychiatric professor, Robert Spencer, who led the APA's decision in 1973 to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, will present a report that homosexuals are able to alter their orientation to heterosexuality, especially with religious help. ”

“ Whether because of disgust, confusion, or ignorance about homosexuality, lesbian and gay sexuality dominates the discourse of not only same-sex adoption, but all lesbian and gay issues. The classification of lesbians and gays as ‘exclusively sexual beings’ stands in stark contrast to the perception of heterosexual parents as ‘people who, along with many other activities in their lives, occasionally engage in sex.’ Through this narrative, lesbians and gays are reduced to one-dimensional creatures, defined by their sex and sexuality. ”

“ The categories of heterosexual and homosexual emerged in the late nineteenth century, although there were people at all time periods in American history whose primary erotic and emotional attractions were to people of the same sex. ”

“ It is also doubtful whether such an acquaintanceship would greatly help me, for I have a very peculiar conception of homosexuality. As you will see, I have little more in common with what are called pæderasts than sexual indifference to the female sex, and I often ask myself: 'Does any other man in the whole world feel like you? Are you alone in the earth with your morbid desires? Are you a pariah of pariahs, or is there, perhaps, another soul with similar longings living near you? ”

“ All the drawing and painting in the world will not prevent his having emotion when he looks at the face of a pretty girl.
In our segregation schools boys and girls see nothing of each other. The unsublimated sex instinct finds expression in homosexuality, that is the emotion that should go to the opposite sex is fixed on a person of the same sex. I admit that we are all more or less homosexual; otherwise there could be no friendship between man and man, or woman and woman. In our boarding schools the sex instinct often takes the road of auto-eroticism. ”

“ They will in due course be outgrown and replaced by other manifestations of sexual interest, unless unwise methods of repression are used.
HOMOSEXUALITY means a state in which one is sexually attracted toward members of the same sex. This is normally a primitive characteristic of childhood, which prevails up to the time of adolescence, but which may persist in adult life. Some degree of it does normally hold over in every adult, but it remains in the background of the unconscious, and is sublimated along social lines. ”

“ As to “sexual orientation”, I adopt the following definition put forward by Cameron:
“... sexual orientation is defined by reference to erotic attraction: in the case of heterosexuals, to members of the opposite sex; in the case of gays and lesbians, to members of the same sex. Potentially a homosexual or gay or lesbian person can therefore be anyone who is erotically attracted to members of his or her own sex.” ”

“ When we have recognized that there is a tendency for homosexuality to arise in persons of usually normal tendency who are placed under conditions (as on board ship or in prison) where the exercise of normal sexuality is impossible, there is little further classification to be achieved along this line. [129] We have gone as far as is necessary by admitting a general undefined homosexuality,—a relationship of unspecified nature to persons of the same sex,—in addition to the more specific sexual inversion. ”

“ But constant sexual association with lower intellectual or social homosexuals impairs the manly idealism, coarsens the nature, and destroys the original refinement of its victim. In homosexual love, as in heterosexual love and friendship, the man easily becomes what his company is ”

“ The processes of repression and of sublimation set in to deal with these cravings much earlier than in other persons. For one reason or another the heterosexual components are repressed and the homosexual are evolved. The heterosexual cravings are hemmed in and rendered useless by disgust, hatred or fear.
Homosexuality arises out of bisexuality as a result of certain particular attitudes which become determined very early in life. But not always. Such traits may appear also relatively late in life. ”

“ But the tendency to bisexuality is unable to withstand the powerful stress of puberty. The girlish boy becomes a man, the tomboy girl becomes a young woman. The development of the secondary sexual characters displace man’s heterosexual characteristics with the stamp of monosexuality. Usually at this time there develops also a decisive struggle against homosexuality leading, sooner or later, to the complete suppression of that tendency. (Naturally there are exceptions, as some persons retain their bisexual character traits without trouble throughout life.) ”

“ Let us then first consider what Homosexuality is.
Homosexuality means sexual love for one of the same sex. Thus, if a male feels sexual desire for another male, or a female for another female, they are called sexually inverted or homosexual. ”

“ On the other hand, it is possible that esthetic and ethical sympathy with persons of the opposite sex may favor the development of hetero-sexual desires. Thus it happens that the individual, according to the predominance of favorable or unfavorable influences, experiences now hetero-sexual, now homo-sexual, feeling. ”

“ Indeed, the whole point of the attraction is that the inverted boy vaguely feels his own feminine disposition and so shuns the uncongenial amusements and society of his own sex for the sympathy and community of tastes which he finds concentrated in his mother. So far from such association being evidence of sexual attraction it might more reasonably be regarded as evidence of its absence; just as the association of boys among themselves, and of girls among themselves, even in co-educational schools, is proof of the prevalence of heterosexual rather than of homosexual feeling. ”

“ The arguments that similisexual love and its satisfactions are a natural or "unnatural" violation of existence, because heterosexual congress is associated with propreation; that homosexuality is a criminal waste of precious sexual feeling and material, etc., are of the least logical. ”

“ How may the homosexual be cured? If he is made heterosexual he represses his homosexuality and becomes neurotic for that reason; the endeavor to turn him bisexual meets the course of social development. The proper therapic course would be to remove the inhibitions which stand between him and woman, to make him de facto again bisexual and heterosexual for all practical purposes. That is certainly possible and it may be attained through analysis provided the subjects have the patience and perseverance to carry it out. Where the will is lacking no therapist can accomplish anything. ”

“ If the mother, or other feminine guardian, should be homosexually disposed, i.e., showing a physical interest in women and a physical indifference to men, then, by the same token, the boy would tend to develop a sexual interest in women, and become a normal heterosexual man.
Every young boy's ambition, normally, is to be like his father ”

“ That the homosexual feeling, like the heterosexual, may lead to public abuses of liberty and decency; that it needs a strict self-control; and that much teaching and instruction on the subject is needed; we of course do not deny. ”

“ What we obtain always are mere sectional views of homosexuality. A cross section yields merely a corresponding view of the picture. Only the apposition of the various sectional views can furnish us the proper perspective for reconstructing the whole picture of homosexuality.
Infantile reminiscences in both cases were partial determinants which lead to a lasting fear of women and to withdrawal from heterosexual love. Delta had witnessed an unhappy marriage as a child, Sigma heard a great deal about faithlessness and about woman’s lack of loyalty. ”

“ We have further to distinguish sexual inversion and all other forms of homosexuality from another kind of inversion which usually remains, so far as the sexual impulse itself is concerned, heterosexual, that is to say, normal. Inversion of this kind leads a person to feel like a person of the opposite sex, and to adopt, so far as possible, the tastes, habits, and dress of the opposite sex, while the direction of the sexual impulse remains normal. ”

“ Finally, the persons who turn to their own sex when forcibly excluded from the society of the opposite sex, can by no means be assumed, without question, to be normal heterosexual persons. It is only a small proportion of heterosexual persons who experience these impulses under such conditions. There are always others who under the same conditions remain emotionally attracted to the opposite sex and sexually indifferent to their own sex. ”

“ But like the normal heterosexual individual, even the 'male hero' type displays a permanent latent disposition to neurosis.
"The process of sublimation is more difficult in the case of the normal homosexual than in the case of the normal heterosexual. That is why this type is extremely rare and why a thorough analysis always discloses typical neurotic reactions. The neurotic reactions of expression are anxiety, fear, shame, disgust and hatred. The heterosexual is inspired with disgust at any homosexual act. ”

“ With men, too, it is possible that an overstrong affection and admiration for the father may lead to a corresponding result. In these cases we should expect the homosexuality to be of a deeper and more fundamental character than that referred to above, the members of the lover's own sex exercising attraction, as it were, on their own merits, and not merely as substitutes for the forbidden members of the opposite sex ”

“ Little boys are taught that they will grow up and marry a girl. Little girls are taught they will grow up and marry a boy. And growing up with those expectations, it is not uncommon for people to engage in sexual behavior with someone of the other sex, possibly before they have developed their real sense of who they are, of what their sexual orientation is. And I think that's one of the reasons why... [gay men and lesbians have] experience [d] heterosexual intercourse.... [I] t is not part of their identity. ”

“ If the homosexual differ in any respect, under this aspect, from the heterosexual, it is by exhibiting a more frequent tendency to be slightly neuropathic, nervously sensitive, and femininely emotional. ”

“ It is interesting also to observe the sublimation which the heterosexual love undergoes among homosexuals. They endeavor to de-sexualize the other sex, at the same time have recourse to heterosexual [Pg 272] friendships by preference. I know quite a number of homosexuals of this class, men who maintain motherly, sisterly, or even grandmotherly friendships and to whom these friendships are positively indispensable. We psychoanalysts are in a position to appreciate the source of these sexual attachments. ”

“ Homosexualism is a symphony running through a marvellous range of psychic keys, with many high and heroic (one might say divine) harmonies; but constantly relapsing to base and fantastic discords!... Is there really now, as ages ago, a sexual aristocracy of the male? A mystic and hellenic Brotherhood, a sort of super-virile man? A race through which hearts never to be kindled by any woman; though, it once aglow, their strange fires can burn not less ardently and purely than ours? ”