Main description:

This book bridges psychoanalytic thought and sexual science. It brings sexuality back to the center of psychoanalysis and shows how important it is for students of human sexuality to understand motives that are often irrational and unconscious. The authors present a new perspective about male and female development, emphasizing the ways in which sexual orientation and homophobia appear early in life. The clinical section of the book focuses on the psychodynamics and treatment of homophobia and internalized homophobia.

Contents:

Part 1: Theoretical/Developmental 1. Sexual Fantasies in Men and Women2. Genetic Influences on Sexual Orientation3. Psychoendocrinology and Sexual Orientation4. Psychoendocrinology and Role Behavior5. Freud, Oedipus, and Homosexuality6. Toward a Revised Formulation of Male Oedipal Aggression7. Psychobiology of Late Childhood: Significance for Developmental Psychoanalytic Theory8. Female Homosexuality: Classical Psychoanalytic Theory ReconsideredPart 2: Clinical 9. Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, and the Negative Therapeutic Reaction10. Internalized Homophobia, Pathological Grief, and High-Risk Behavior in a Gay Man with Multiple Psychiatric Disorders11. Internalized Homophobia and Gender-Valued Self-Esteem in the Psychoanalysis of Gay Patients12. Homophobic Parents13. Psychopathology, Suicidality, and Homosexuality: New Developments14. Coming Out at Eighty-Four: The Psychotherapeutic Treatment of Internalized Homophobia in a Lesbian Patient15. Sexual Orientation and Psychoanalysis: Problems and Controversies16. The Model of Homosexuality as Psychopathology: Science and Psychoanalysis