“Everyday language possesses no counterpart to the word ‘hunger’, but science makes use of the word ‘libido’ for that purpose.” – S. Freud
In the oddly structured Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality Freud breaks down the subject first into aberrations or perversions, then infantile sexuality and puberty. Typical of Freud’s writing style, he never examined something thoroughly and then wrote about it. The subject of sexuality, in truth, is in almost every book and paper that Freud ever wrote. This review will encompass the Three Essays but also some updated insights throughout Freud’s later writings, and also some critical commentary that shows the direction the subject will eventually lead to in the modern era.
The Aberrations
To keep in mind how different sexuality can manifest, Freud tries to simplify the subject/object relations. He defined that a sexual object is the source of attraction, but the sexual aim is the sexual act the instinct intends. What Freud means by instinct is different from biology. Instincts for Freud are connected to the libido. The libido is the sexual energy of the instinct, and the instinct takes that energy and emotionally invests it with an aim, or action that leads to discharge, and has an object that provides the gratification. The instinct “lies on the frontier between the mental and the physical.” Understanding this allows for the individuals studied to have different sexual objects and sexual aims and help explain the large variations we see.
Inversion (Homosexuality)
The first aberration Freud outlines, which he says includes “no small number of people”, is what he called Inversion, or Homosexuality. He describes the basic categories of absolute inverts, who enjoy exclusively their own sex, amphigenic inverts who are essentially bisexuals, and contingent inverts who resort to homosexuality when there is inaccessibility to other heterosexual objects. These simple categories, at this early time in psychology, break down into different opinions of homosexuals and how they identify with their orientation. Freud says, “inverts vary in their views as to the peculiarity of their sexual instinct. Some of them accept their inversion as something in the natural course of things, and insist energetically that inversion is as legitimate as the normal attitude; others rebel against their inversion and feel it as a pathological compulsion. The fact of a person struggling in this way against a compulsion towards inversion may perhaps determine the possibility of his being influenced by suggestion. It is safe to assume that the most extreme form of inversion will have been present from a very early age and that the person concerned will feel at one with his peculiarity.”
Degeneracy
The typical attitude in Europe at the early part of the 20th century was that inversion was a degeneracy. In contrast, Freud reminds the reader that it was frequent and existed “among the peoples of antiquity at the height of their civilization”, and is also widespread in primitive cultures. The display of inversion is more related to how many prohibitions a society puts on it. Freud also counters the degeneracy model of homosexuality by pointing out that when people have psychological problems, they may also have sexual problems, but this doesn’t always work in the reverse. Many people have sexual problems and differences but it doesn’t affect their ability to be competent in every other area of life. Psychological problems can cause sexual problems, but sexual problems don’t necessarily cause psychological problems. Homosexuality is too complex to be argued as a simple degeneracy.
What is inverted?
To look at what masculine and feminine traits can be inverted, Freud uses a simple definition of active versus passive. People have a mixture of active and passive energy, including sexuality. Freud goes back to antiquity to find an example: “It is clear that in Greece, where the most masculine men were numbered among the inverts, what excited a man’s love was not the masculine character of a boy, but his physical resemblance to a woman as well as his feminine mental qualities – his shyness, his modesty and his need for instruction and assistance. As soon as the boy became a man he ceased to be a sexual object for men and himself, perhaps, became a lover of boys. In this instance, therefore, as in many others, the sexual object is not someone of the same sex but someone who combines the characters of both sexes; there is, as it were, a compromise between an impulse that seeks for a man and one that seeks for a woman, while it remains a paramount condition that the object’s body (i.e. genitals) shall be masculine. Thus the sexual object is a kind of reflection of the subject’s own bisexual nature.” This goes back to Wilhelm Fliess’s theory of psychological bisexuality, which allows this fluidity in people to move between active and passive sexual attitudes. Freud also pointed to biological hermaphroditism as another proof of bisexuality, as he was fond of making biological and psychological correlations in his theories.
Homosexual development
Freud was at the early debate between beliefs that sexuality was innate or acquired. He came to the conclusion that “the choice between ‘innate’ and ‘acquired’ is not an exclusive one or that it does not cover all the issues involved in inversion.” Some of the reasons for this ambiguous conclusion are his findings that the sexual aim varied throughout life, and in absolute homosexuals it never did. Some people were involved early on with mutual masturbation and early seductions with the same sex, and they didn’t remain homosexual. Yet others act inverted only in extreme situations like in war, prison, or if they have a trauma related to sex with the opposite sex, or if they have a trouble performing. Freud says, “the problem of inversion is a highly complex one and includes very various types of sexual activity and development. A strict conceptual distinction should be drawn between different cases of inversion according to whether the sexual character of the object or that of the subject has been inverted.”
Freud goes back to the sexual aim and doubts that a sexual instinct is attached to a particular object, he says “it may be questioned whether the various accidental influences would be sufficient to explain the acquisition of inversion without the co-operation of something in the subject himself. Experience of the cases that are considered abnormal has shown us that in them the sexual instinct and the sexual object are merely soldered together, where the object appears to form part and parcel of the instinct.” Freud is careful to warn that “the origin of inversion has not been found by psychoanalysis, but a psychical mechanism of its development has.” The following theories Freud expounded show how homosexuality can happen, (though examples are mainly of males), but it doesn’t cover what we know of biological predisposition, as this was before the days of understandings of the effect of DNA, and hormones on sexuality. Later scientific studies show enough variation of results confirming that not every scenario will guarantee that someone will be a heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual simply by their method of upbringing alone. Biological predispositions exist along side environmental influences.
Disclaimer
As my reviews continue on there will be many theories of conversion therapy, and abusive practices that have long since been discredited by the late 20th century. Using stressful methods that make “patients” into suicidal wrecks is not moral, regardless of the cause of a person’s orientation. These are modern disclaimers, but they need to be said. The stigma of homosexuality also enters into self-stigma. This can lead to protesting homosexuality like a projection, where the person who is concerned about homosexuality in society is actually concerned about their latent homosexuality. The fear of bullying and ostracism can lead to self-hatred and repression. There is also bullying that occurs with people who label themselves as one orientation or another, and they pressure people who learn about new aspects of their sexuality to sleep with them. Just because society is moving on and more people are learning that they are authentically homosexual or bisexual doesn’t mean they are attracted to everyone associated with those labels, and they don’t have to give into that pressure. Long-term romantic relationships involve more than sex, but also friendship, love, values and compatible goals, regardless of orientation.
Freud’s theories
Freud’s theories on the development of homosexuality are predominately found in the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of His Childhood. His views are that the sexual object-choice is ultimately aiming at the opposite sex, simply because of the need for procreation, but naturally it doesn’t always end up that way, and many environmental influences can adjust the object-choice along the way.
Narcissism
“In all cases we have examined we have established the fact that the future inverts, in the earliest years of their childhood, pass through a phase of very intense but short-lived fixation to a woman (usually their mother), and after that [the boy cannot continue to develop consciously any further, the boy represses his love for his mother: he puts himself in her place, identifies himself with her], and [takes himself as a model of a sexual object]. That is to say, they proceed from a narcissistic basis, and look for a young man who resembles themselves and whom they may love as their mother loved them, and then get to learn about themselves…Moreover, we have frequently found that alleged inverts have been by no means insusceptible to the charms of women, but have continually transposed the excitation aroused by women on to a male object. They have thus repeated all through their lives the mechanism by which their inversion arose. Their compulsive longing for men has turned out to be determined by their ceaseless flight from women.”
In a way Freud is describing imitation of a role-model, and self-efficacy, or being able to be so skilled at a type of sexuality, that it can become an identification. The mother shows her way of mastering the world and how she gets her needs met, and that becomes the template for the boy because he knows everything about how femininity works. Freud says, “a homosexual in this way remains unconsciously fixated with a [memory] image of his mother. By repressing his love for his mother he preserves it in his unconscious and from now on remains faithful to her. While he seems to pursue boys and to be their lover, he is in reality running away from the other women, who might cause him to be unfaithful.” As the mother is treated as the ideal woman, meaning he is still attracted to women, he keeps repeating the prior mechanism of pleasing men as a way to please himself, and staying faithful to his mother. This of course can be transposed to a woman who becomes a lesbian. They identify with their father instead and master masculinity as a way of getting their needs met.
Narcissism for Freud is an auto-eroticism of being able to please oneself. But also beyond mastering masculinity or femininity, there is also the influence of what is not mastered.
Trading of skills
In contrast to mastering masculine or feminine traits, and identifying with them, and their sexual objects, is choosing an object by appreciating what they offer. Freud says, “that in the case of men a childhood recollection of the affection shown them by their mother and others of the female sex who looked after them when they were children contributes powerfully to directing their choice towards women.” This can also be apparent in the opposite situation. Freud says, “the education of boys by male persons (by slaves, in antiquity) seems to encourage homosexuality. The frequency of inversion among the present-day aristocracy is made somewhat more intelligible by their employment of menservants, as well as by the fact that their mothers give less personal care to their children.”
Envy and rivalry
Freud exploits the natural desire for humans to feel lack and want what they don’t have. He says “early experience of being deterred by their father from sexual activity and their competitive relation with him deflect them from their own sex. Both of these two factors apply equally to girls, whose sexual activity is particularly subject to the watchful guardianship of their mother. They thus acquire a hostile relation to their own sex which influences their object-choice decisively in what is regarded as the normal direction.” In other words, the prohibition of the opposite sex parent increases the desire of the opposite sex in general.
There’s another curious affect of envy and rivalry. In Freud’s, Some Neurotic Mechanisms In Jealousy, Paranoia And Homosexuality (1922), he describes a form of rivalry where older brothers or another male rival is pointed at as being superior, either by the mother, or in conflict with brothers, and the subject eventually treats the rival as a love object. This is a precursor to René Girard’s theory on how some forms of homosexuality appear, when there was no prior indication. What happens is a form of masochism when there is a defeat suffered from a rival, then admiration is projected onto the victor, but in some cases a sexual attraction goes along with the admiration. René would point out the influence of mimetics, or imitation, in that the subject wants to be the winner, but if the subject feels helpless and masochistic in ever being a winner, they choose the passive attitude typical of a woman.
Another telling quote is from On the Dynamics of Transference (1912), where Freud reminds people of the sexual nature of libido. He says, “we are obliged to recognize that all the emotional relationships we draw upon in life, such as liking, friendship, trust and so forth – however pure and un-sensual they seem to our conscious self-perception – are genetically related to sexuality, and have developed out of purely sexual desires through the modifying of sexual aims. Originally, sexual objects were all that we knew and psychoanalysis has shown us that the people we merely esteem or respect in our real lives can still be sexual objects for our unconscious.”
Fear and disgust
Using Greek examples, Freud cited the mythological gorgon, Medusa in Medusa’s head (1922). For Freud, this myth represents a boy’s fear of castration. Seeing female genitals, “probably those of an adult, surrounded by hair, and essentially those of his mother”, leads to horror in the boy, like Medusa’s victims turning into stone with terror. Freud says, “this symbol of horror is worn upon her dress by the virgin goddess Athene. And rightly so, for thus she becomes a woman who is unapproachable and repels all sexual desires – since she displays the terrifying genitals of the Mother. Since the Greeks were in the main, strongly homosexual, it was inevitable that we should find among them a representation of woman as a being who frightens and repels because she is castrated.” Also in line with this theory is Freud’s castration complex, where the penis is valued more highly than the clitoris. In early childhood sexual theories, boys and girls could think of a girl growing her clitoris. At the time, the boy may look at the girl’s appendage as inferior sexually, and see the penis as necessary for sexual stimulation.
Freud was a proponent of providing sex education, precisely to prevent children from fixating and worrying about sexual mysteries, including the value of the penis versus the clitoris. Going back to the view of seeing value in one sex or another, Freud warned in On The Sexual Theories Of Children (1908) that “if this idea of a woman with a penis becomes ‘fixated’ in an individual when he is a child, resisting all the influences of later life and making him as a man unable to do without a penis in his sexual object, then, although in other respects he may lead a normal sexual life, he is bound to become a homosexual, and will seek his sexual object among men who, owing to some other physical and mental characteristics, remind him of women. Real women, when he comes to know them later, remain impossible as sexual objects for him, because they lack the essential sexual attraction; indeed, in connection with another impression of his childhood life, they may even become abhorrent to him. The child, having been mainly dominated by excitations in the penis, will usually have obtained pleasure by stimulating it with his hand; he will have been detected in this by his parents or nurse and terrorized by the threat of having his penis cut off. The effect of this ‘threat of castration’ is proportionate to the value set upon that organ and is quite extraordinarily deep and persistent. Legends and myths testify to the upheaval in the child’s emotional life and to the horror which is linked with the castration complex – a complex which is subsequently remembered by consciousness with corresponding reluctance. The woman’s genitalia, when seen later on, are regarded as a mutilated organ and recall this threat, and they therefore arouse horror instead of pleasure in the homosexual.” Here again we have an example of forbidden desire increasing in value in proportion to the prohibition, in this case of the penis with masturbation.
Absence of same-sex parent
Along with prohibition and envy, as influences, is role-modeling. Freud’s theories talk about both an absent parent or a weak one as a possible influence on sexuality. Freud says, “in the case of some hysterics it is found that the early loss of one of their parents, by early death, divorce or separation, with the result that the remaining parent absorbs the whole of the child’s love, determines the sex of the person who is later to be chosen as a sexual object, and may thus open the way to permanent inversion…Among the accidental factors that influence object-choice we have found that frustration deserves attention, and we have observed that the presence of both parents plays an important part. The absence of a strong father in childhood not infrequently favours the occurrence of inversion.” Here we can see where the complexity of these theses gets a bit out of control with contradiction. We now have two opposite examples, one where the parent as a focal point becomes emulated to become like the parent in object choice, and in this case, the single parent becomes the model of sex the child will love in the future. Unless there is a predisposition, there is very little information as to why a child mimics the mother’s sex or instead mimic’s the mother’s sexual object.
Reverse Oedipus Complex
Sometimes there wasn’t only a physical absence but a switch of roles. Freud speculated with theories of Isidor Sadger that “…mothers of his homosexual patients were frequently masculine women, women with energetic traits of character, who were able to push the father out of his proper place…Indeed it almost seems as though the presence of a strong father would ensure that the son made the correct decision in his choice of object, namely someone of the opposite sex.” Opposite of the typical Oedipus Complex, the same sex parent is of the opposite sexual character, a passive male father for a gay man, and an assertive mother for a lesbian woman.
Summary of homosexual development
In summary, mastering either masculine or feminine energy to please oneself, engaging in competition with a male or female parent, having fear or disgust with men or women, and having appreciation for what can be provided by a man or a woman, along with a biological predisposition, leads to the final sexual orientation of the individual, whether an active or passive homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual. The biological determinants of sexual orientation would have to wait for more scientific advances later in the 20th century. Just so that people reading who are actually thinking of spending extra time with their children teaching typical masculine or feminine skills, actively developing envy by monopolizing the opposite sex parent to the child, emphasizing the sexual desire and usefulness of the opposite sex, and maintaining traditional sexual roles for the parents, modern psychology shows that children may still be homosexual precisely because of biological predisposition. There needs to be a control of shaming that would psychologically harm the child, when parents become hyper-vigilant trying to control the destiny of their child’s sexual orientation. A famous example comes from Freud.
Freud had this to say to a mother who wrote a letter asking him to treat her son’s homosexuality. Freud said, “I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you why you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them. (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime –and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.
By asking me if I can help [your son], you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way we cannot promise to achieve it. In a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies, which are present in every homosexual; in the majority of cases it is no more possible. It is a question of the quality and the age of the individual. The result of treatment cannot be predicted.
What analysis can do for your son runs in a different line. If he is unhappy, neurotic, torn by conflicts, inhibited in his social life, analysis may bring him harmony, peace of mind, full efficiency, whether he remains homosexual or gets changed.”
Going back to antiquity Freud reminds modern civilization of what was understood in the past. The difference between the modern day and the ancient world in sexual matters is “that the ancients laid the stress upon the instinct itself, whereas we emphasize its object. The ancients glorified the instinct and were prepared on its account to honour even an inferior object; while we despise the instinctual activity in itself, and find excuses for it only in the merits of the object.” In a way this describes neatly how personal emotions are denigrated and replaced by social rewards causing a self-alienation.
Ultimately this is a case study of how science can sometimes find “answers” but with more advancements in understanding biology and even the complexity of human beings that don’t fit the mold, Freud’s theories are too preliminary to be the final say so. Is it possible for a homosexual to not have a fixation on their mothers, or to not have a weak father, or to not have a desire to have sex with their parent of the same sex, or to be raised by a single parent, or to not be a narcissist, or to not be horrified by a vagina? When theories don’t explain all the data they always leave room for updated theories to replace them. This is especially true when lousy studies turn up involving false positives of successful conversions of homosexuals, who are really bisexuals, who have both same sex and opposite sex attractions. Then we have the situation where people don’t have a lot of experience sexually and may not even know what their sexual orientation is at it’s fullest range. Self-reports of sexual identifications may not match actual sexual behaviour, and may not predict future sexual behaviour. It goes back to Freud’s quote, “it may be questioned whether the various accidental influences would be sufficient to explain the acquisition of inversion without the co-operation of something in the subject himself.” People may actually like their relationships and sexual experiences. Do professionals, like psychologists, want to break apart relationships that are potentially happy? What are the moral consequences of forcing people into loveless marriages that lead to those same dissatisfactions that ironically make couples run to therapy in the first place? Sexuality isn’t about general labels and groups of people, but about individuals who love each other. Because it’s so difficult to find actual love separate from exploitative relationships, professionals themselves not excluded from failed relationships, there are very few people that can actually be qualified to know what relationship is good for you. That is an omniscience nobody has!
Children and Animals
After devoting a large section to homosexuality, Freud theorizes about other aberrations that the majority of the public would deem intolerable. Sex with children is treated by Freud as sporadic, when there is cowardice, or if the child becomes a substitute when there is impotence, or if the instinct is urgent and there is no other appropriate object; it is exceptionally rare when children are “exclusive sexual objects.” To Freud it shows how the sexual instinct allows so much variation, or a polymorphous perversity. Another example is sex with animals, where Freud says that it “is by no means rare, especially among country people, and in which sexual attraction seems to override the barriers of species.” It is easy to label these people as insane, but like in the situation with homosexuality, Freud finds that perversions can co-exist with people who are competent in other areas of life. Freud says, “one would be glad on aesthetic grounds to be able to ascribe these and other severe aberrations of the sexual instinct to insanity; but that cannot be done. Experience shows that disturbances of the sexual instinct among the insane do not differ from those that occur among the healthy and in whole races or occupations. Thus the sexual abuse of children is found with uncanny frequency among school teachers and child attendants, simply because they have the best opportunity for it. The insane merely exhibit any such aberration to an intensified degree; or, what is particularly significant, it may become exclusive and replace normal sexual satisfaction entirely.”
Perversion Part 1: Incest – Ferenczi and Beyond: https://psychreviews.org/perversion-incest/
Perversion Part 2: Bestiality: https://psychreviews.org/perversion-part-2-bestiality/
Perversion Part 3: Necrophilia: https://psychreviews.org/perversion-part-3-necrophilia/
Perversion Part 4: Sexual Offending, Pedohebephilia, and Ritual Abuse: https://psychreviews.org/perversion-part-4-pedohebephilia-ritual-abuse/
Perversion Part 5: Sadomasochism: https://psychreviews.org/perversion-part-5-sadomasochism/
Extensions
Perversions for Freud are defined by how they extend sexual regions beyond what is required for sexual union, and are often identified by how society designates what is disgusting. Perversions can also be demarcated when viewing overvaluation. Overvaluation can be dangerous because the person idealized can be accepted as an authority automatically and the lover can then become credulous and not test their assertions and opinions. Extensions and overvaluations can include being attracted to other regions of the body not normally involved with sexuality, also excessive touching and voyeurism that replaces the “final sexual aim.” Some of these extensions move beyond the body but to actual inanimate objects. These objects of sexual fetish are associated in some way with the person and all people have a certain ability to fetishize, for example when you look at how fashion is used to accentuate sexuality. A fetish only becomes a perversion when the object replaces the person as the sexual aim. Other extensions that can replace sexual partners include exhibitionism, and voyeurism. Rarer extensions include “licking excrement and intercourse with dead bodies.”
Sadism and Masochism
A more universal aberration to Freud is Sadism and Masochism. What makes it universal is that sexuality itself involves sadism which is an aggressive desire to subjugate. For him, both attitudes are the same, but the difference is that sadism is directed outwardly and masochism is a form of sadism against oneself. Masochism is part of the passive element of sexuality where the subject emphasizes a sense of guilt and a need for punishment. Sadism is a part of the active element of sexuality and has a deep desire for mastery and to punish externally. These two attitudes become perversions when the masochist goes into self-abandonment and dependence on an abuser, and the sadist is perverted when cruelty replaces sexuality. [See: The Origins of Envy and Narcissism: https://rumble.com/v1gsnwv-the-origin-of-envy-and-narcissism-ren-girard.html]
Repression and neurosis
Freud views symptoms of neurotics stemming from repression of “sexual instinctual forces” that need discharge. They manifest as psychological suffering. Much of the repressions and internal conflict is related to unconscious homosexuality, and sexual extensions as described above. These symptoms can become acute when there is “exaggerated sexual craving and excessive aversion to sexuality.” The aversion to sexuality manifests as repression based on shame, disgust, and morality. Freud says, “between the pressure of the instinct and his antagonism to sexuality, illness offers him a way of escape. It does not solve his conflict, but seeks to evade it by transforming his libidinal impulses into symptoms.”
How this occurs is that the subject gets sexual excitement that leads to repression and then there is a compensation. Freud says,“…the libido behaves like a stream whose main bed has become blocked. It proceeds to fill up collateral channels which may hitherto have been empty…Thus, in the same way, what appears to be the strong tendency…of psychoneurotics to perversion may be collaterally determined, and must, in any case, be collaterally intensified. The fact is that we must put sexual repression as an internal factor alongside such external factors as limitation of freedom, inaccessibility of a normal sexual object, the dangers of the normal sexual act, etc., which bring about perversions in persons who might perhaps otherwise have remained normal.” The neurotic person may have a constitution for perversion, and need little environmental influence, but a person with an average constitution may be influenced by strong environmental factors.
Since these repressions could be experienced by anyone, Freud felted that he “increased the number of people who might be regarded as perverts.” If something innate is to be found then Freud felt that he would need to find it in children and realize that “the sexuality of neurotics has remained in, or been brought back to, an infantile state,” a form of regression. In the next part we will look at Freud’s exploration of infantile sexuality, component instincts, and development.
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality: The 1905 Edition – Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781784783587/
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (Regular edition) – Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781784783594/
Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood (Strachey Translation) – Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780393001495/
On The Sexual Theories Of Children – Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781473319912/
Some Neurotic Mechanisms In Jealousy, Paranoia And Homosexuality – Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780099426738/
On the Dynamics of Transference – Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780141182421/
Things hidden since the foundation of the world – René Girard: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781474268431/
Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis – Tim Dean and Christopher Lane: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780226139364/
Male Homosexuality: A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspective (Updated Edition) – Richard C. Friedman: Paperback: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780300047455/
Psychoanalysis and Male Homosexuality: Twentieth-Anniversary Edition, by Kenneth Lewes: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780765706478/
“Rereading Narcissism: Freud’s Theory of Male Homosexuality and Hawthorne’s ‘The Gentle Boy,’” Modern Psychoanalysis vol. 34(2), 2009: pp. 48-78.
Lewes, K. (1988). The psychoanalytic theory of male homosexuality. New York, NY, US: Simon & Schuster.
Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis – Salman Akhtar: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781855754713/
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/