Summary

This landmark book is the first and only historical, cultural, and theoretical account of how male homosexuality has been viewed - and sometimes misconstrued - by the psychoanalytic tradition, from Freud through the 1980s. In this groundbreaking survey, Kenneth Lewes reveals how the original psychoanalytic ideals of understanding and compassion have been betrayed by clinicians and theorists. Viewing Freud and his early followers in a new light, Dr. Lewes shows how they posited a surprisingly wide variety of "normal" outcomes of psychosexual development, including homosexuality. But in its attitudes toward homosexuality, psychoanalysis soon changed from an open-minded and humane discipline into an insular and calcified orthodoxy. Exposing the basis of the acrimony and alienation that have characterized the relationship between homosexuals and psychoanalysis, Psychoanalysis and Male Homosexuality is a sometimes shocking account of intolerance and hostility. But it is also the story of unexpected sensitivity as it explores the possibilities - as well as the limits - of psychoanalysis as a humane science.