For that reason I am not in favor of the practical management of
homosexuality as carried out by many physicians and particularly by some
psychoanalysts. They urge the homosexual to adopt heterosexual ways, and
consider the subject cured when he is able to have normal coitus a few
times. Unfortunately unpleasant reactions often follow alleged cures
such as are often claimed for persuasion-therapy and hypnosis. The
homosexual abandons all further attempts and prefers his original
monosexual attitude.
We may claim a cure only after the subject under treatment falls in love
with a suitable person of the other sex. _Potentia cœundi_ is not
enough. He must be able to give up dividing the feeling-complex
hatred—love between the two sexes—and to achieve the bipolar attitude
“hatred and love” towards the opposite sex. Such a miracle only love can
perform. Experience proves that the homosexual flees from the
heterosexual love to save himself. The latter looms up in his mind as a
test of power, in which he is anxious to come out the winner, even at
the cost of doing away with his heterosexual partner. He must accept the
subjection to woman implied in love and recognize that in true love both
lovers rule and both obey. He must also learn to recognize the essential
unity of erotism and sexuality. Only when the homosexual finds it
possible to fix his erotism and sexuality upon the same goal, in a
person of the opposite sex,—in other words, when he learns to love in
adult manner,—have we the right to claim a cure. It is only then, at any
rate, that the greatest healer of all ages, love, achieves its easy
victory and the former patient, like all neurotics, thinks that mere
chance has brought him face to face with his ideal. With that end in
view the fixation on the family—through which the homosexual loses his
erotic freedom, occasionally also the sexual—must be severed. I have
brought strong proofs to show that we must transform the homosexual into
a bisexual being, in order to cure him. Practical experience does not
favor bisexuality. We must reckon with the fact that we live in a
monosexual age. The homosexual must transpose his whole sexuality and
must try to overcome or sublimate his one-sided leanings.
The necessary educational discipline takes a long time. The treatment of
homosexuality therefore is a formidable task, both for the analyst and
for the patient. The end-result of the treatment may not be known
definitely for some years.
I have tried to describe the technique of the analysis in the individual
cases. From those various indications the reader may form a picture of
the difficulties. A systematic account of the technique of the analysis
would require a volume in itself. Perhaps after finishing my _Disorders
of the Instincts and Emotions Series_ I may write such a work in order
to acquaint with my experience the practitioners who want to grapple
with the same problems.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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