Mental health practitioners were treated as a last chance for many patients at
the time of Sigmund Freud. Going to meet a complete stranger to talk about what
you wouldn't even tell your family members, has to rate up there in anxiety
with other unpleasant experiences, like waiting for a court verdict or preparing
for surgery. Psychologists were viewed by the public, in Freud's time, as not being
quite as professional as medical doctors. But when a person was desperate, then all
that was left was hope for someone in the professional class to solve what no
one else could. In 1920, Freud had met such a man. He was a father who was very
troubled by the condition of his daughter.
His daughter had fallen in love with a woman a ten years
older than herself. The love interest had a reputation for promiscuity with both
men and women. She loved her so powerfully, and
disappointingly for her parents, to the detriment of her further education and
social functions.
The young lady hated pretense, and
without care for her reputation, she continued to be seen in public with the
desired woman. One day her father walked passed her, and saw his daughter was in the
company of the detested woman.
The suicide attempt came to nothing and she recovered from the fall. After the
attempt both parents backed off their criticisms, and being moved by the girl's
passion, her love interest became more friendly.
The difficulty with patients, such as these for Freud, was their clear and
undisguised desires.
Freud saw that psycho-analysis could only help patients release a desire that was
already there.
Freud found that inauthentic choices, coerced by social threats, were not
sufficient to provide any long-term satisfaction.
When working with the girl, she had no such conflicts with her sexuality, but she did
feel grief over how she made her parents feel. Freud thought to himself:
Despite the typical stereotype of
masculine looking women and feminine looking men, Freud still kept the
analysis in the psychical realm because bodily features didn't always explain
the outcome.
As Freud continued with the sessions he could see numerous problems with current
beliefs in the general population, and even in doctors, about homosexuality.
Masculine or feminine looks don't necessarily predict sexual
orientation.
Intellectual prowess or emotional dominance didn't predict sexual
orientation. Many homosexuals have heterosexual libido at differing levels.
Some people are bisexual. For people who have more fluidity, it was possible for
abuse or obstacles towards one sex to motivate the brain to unconsciously look
for same sex replacements. The behaviour of wanting to pursue or wanting to be
pursued can be found in both heterosexual and homosexual
relationships. Early templates and disappointments can influence later
choices. To be or to have: The sex of those who we compete with, for the sex we
want, tells us that wanting to be someone can be a rivalrous imitation that
reduces sexual desire towards the rival, and their sex, and increases sexual
desire for who is sought for. For example, when Freud released this patient, it was
after seeing how she ultimately didn't like her father and transferred that
attitude towards him, another male. By suggesting a female psychoanalyst, Freud
must have believed his presence was only increasing her desire for women and
nothing he could do would change that.
The patient suggested to Freud that she
could obtain a false marriage as a solution to her problem. Of course a
secret life could only produce the illusion of a conversion, and would be
unfulfilling for both partners.
Freud eventually came to the conclusion that all these external influences, as
powerful as they can be, are too weak to displace a very strong internal
authentic desire.
Freud was already seeing, what he encountered in 1921 with
his malpractice on Horace Frink, that the influence of the therapist in personal
sexual choices can easily lead to resistance, revenge, failure, embarrassment
and stress for the patient. Since psychoanalysis is about freeing
repressed desires, there has to be a strong heterosexual desire that is
inhibited in some way that needs freeing. Otherwise, any treatments to forcibly
increase heterosexual desires would necessarily be just another repression,
leading to the same neuroses that Freud was trying to cure in the first place.
Another difficulty I saw with these early attempts at conversion therapy
was how much potential there was for shame and bullying. The question moves
it's target from the so called "patient" to the "therapist." What kind of person would
want to do a job like that? At best a therapist can help to relieve self-blame,
and validate any authentic choices a client makes. Any forced attempts at
changing people could involve sadism and contempt by the therapist. Any
compassionate therapists would find it painful to force an outcome, and they
would be more interested in what good can still be done, and if nothing can be
found, then they would naturally terminate the sessions. Very easily, one
can see narcissists or psychopaths being interested in a job
like this. To be in a power position and to manipulate people, who are confused
about their sexuality, or anything else for that matter, is a great place to be
for a psychological predator. They can get paid and enjoy hurting people at the
same time.
In the early part of the 20th century, Homosexuality was moving towards a
medical model. This was both good and bad depending on the angle. Some people took
it as an explanation as to why a person couldn't change orientations and should
be accepted. Others took the theme of degeneration to the fullest extent to
explain why homosexuality should not be accepted. Germany in the 1920s and 30s
had both the acceptance and contempt co-existing. In A History of Homosexuality
in Europe, Florence Tamagne described a freedom that was beginning where people
could write accounts of how they felt, including early accounts of homosexual
libido.
As you can imagine,
some people embraced their homosexuality and others didn't. Onlookers from the
psychoanalytic point view probably watched with varying reactions. Imitation
in psychoanalysis involves looking at people who are savouring, and then the
brain imagines oneself in the shoes of the person enjoying themselves and
assesses whether the identification would be worth savouring or not. People
can be turned on or turned off. In psychoanalysis the question is, and no
pun intended, "do you spit or swallow?" Projection and
introjection can have an element of taking a picture of the savouring
suggestion, feeding, chewing and swallowing or rejecting and spitting out.
The mind samples the environment. Naturally some people will want to swallow
the suggestion, others will want to spit it out, and some will swallow but be
afraid of rejection from others if they found out that they like to swallow. Some
of the feelings of being turned on or off would also have a variety of
strengths, causing stronger or weaker reactions. Mixed reactions towards
homosexuality would spread throughout society, and political choices around the
subject would also polarize people. Because desire is political and involves
an urge to imitate, there's also an urge to want to regulate and control desires
in the general public to limit imitative influence. This is especially true in
environments where the general public feel it's purely a choice, and a form of
corruption. These political splits also influenced Psychoanalysis.
Henry Abelove described Freud's views of American sexuality, and he found that...
He felt that American Psychoanalysts had the tendency to see pathology
Freud eventually signed a petition in 1930 to decriminalize homosexuality in Germany
and Austria. After Freud died, psychoanalysis continued in America with
the disease mentality towards homosexuals, which justified discrimination
and abuse, until the later part of the 20th century. Towards the end of Freud's
persecution heated up in Germany against Jews, but also homosexuals who
were grouped with political non-conformists. The modern world has a
particular abuse pattern where science is used as an excuse for scapegoating
behaviour. If I already hate a group of people, and there are scientific theories
that justify my hatred, then it will be easier to dehumanize and act on those
sadistic feelings. We will see this over and over again throughout the 20th
century. The many deaths caused by Nazism and
Communism are a painful lesson that whatever so called scientific
discoveries cannot be used to justify abuse, murder, and political power-grabbing.
Robert Franklin described this change in Germany in 1933.
into groups. Male homosexuality was criminalized in Paragraph 175 of the
German Penal Code. Because women were capable of having children...
The obsession with
procreation in Nazi Germany was partly the need to out breed opponents, and male
homosexuals were targeted for their non-conformity.
As Paragraph 175 was intensified, mere accusations of homosexuality were enough to get one
arrested and sent to a concentration camp.
Paragraph 175
continued on after the war in Germany until 1994.
By the 1970s, the American Psychiatric Association begin changing their ethical
guidelines based on that....Because of this,
the world of mental health had to adjust to a world that wasn't ready for
the main insight that Freud found, that if there's no increase in pathology to
society coming from homosexuality, then the reason for persecution is baseless.
They simply were scapegoats, and many in authority were the ones with the
pathology. It's possible for the inmates to take over the asylum and project
their ideas of disease without observing reality. Many of the later "conversion
therapies" betrayed that kind of bias where science took a backseat to
philosophy and religion. Freud even 100 years ago was able to see that any
fluidity would require a person to have enough craving, or libido, to work with.
Essentially they would have to be bisexual to some degree. Without that, you
are reinforcing internalized bigotry, or self-hatred, which is the opposite of
therapy. Therapy has to be done with a light enough touch so that what is
authentic can be unrepressed. Low self-esteem is self-destructive, and for
many people, satisfaction is what allows for the healing. Without
satisfaction, people turn to self-harm and addictions. A former gay conversion
therapist John Smid saw that treating homosexuality like treating
an alcoholic was the wrong approach.
What is key that opens the door to relationship
happiness is again what Freud pointed out, and that was tenderness. Where people
fight over what is a disease or what is healthy, they are leaving out the
emotional aspect of sexuality. If sexuality is a cold monetary exchange,
a short-term release followed by disregard, a way to regulate emotions
like substances, or a form of engulfing and domination, it's not Love. You're
treating people as a means to an end. The perfume of tenderness is what allows for
a sense of caring for your partner. For Freud our tenderness examples start with
family, and often we are attracted to people who have those same expressions
of tenderness. To consciously look for those expressions of tenderness in others, and
to return the favour of course, takes love beyond lust. When lust is
satiated and bored, tenderness is the bridge across the desert of emptiness,
that has the patience to wait for lust to regenerate.
Since the time of Freud, the early complexities of relationship theories
only grew more complex. With more tolerance, came a large variety of
possible sexual and emotional combinations. With advances in research
on the origins of homosexuality, the myriad possible causes still left people
to decide for themselves what they really wanted to do. In Sexual
Orientation and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Friedman and Downey found
that despite all the biological indicators, they concluded that...
Stephen O. Murray in Homosexualities, also found many patterns
and had to loosely categorized them. In particular, one category he lists is
trending today: egalitarian defined relationships. Modern relationships in
particular investigate the role of power differentials. Regardless of sexual
orientation, power for modern people is increasingly something to consider
before a person engages in a long-term relationship. For many, undesirable power
positions are deal-breakers. Ilka Quindeau in Seduction and Desire: The
Psychoanalytic Theory of Sexuality since Freud says that...
As freedom increases, and people are able to explore what they like, there's an
increased complexity of desires making an unpredictable self that conflicts
with traditional social and economic power structures.
This fluidity also has a chance
to break some LGBT stereotypes. In my interview of narcissistic abuse of LGBTIQA
victims, labels weren't always welcome. Individuals want to check how
they feel and think before acting sexually, and they don't want to consult
a chart or follow a random suggestion from somebody. Historian Jeffrey Weeks said
Friedman and Downey concluded that...
Ilka Quindeau notes that...
Despite Freud's theories being a century old, his early analyses
of sexual fluidity continued to be influential during this entire time. Ilka
still preserves some of Freud's insights for today's world.
Instead of social structures dictating what should be desired,
individuals are increasingly changing the social structures to allow their
authentic desires. If inauthentic relationships naturally crumble, due to
to an empty foundation lacking desire, then people are free to create the structures
they want to live in using authentic desire as a foundation. Both traditional
and modern relationships can co-exist, with people changing only when they
really feel like it, and not because of suggestion or coercion.
