| In
his 1905 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality Sigmund
Freud invented the idea of sexuality is a process
independent of an individual's sex. Thinkers before
Freud from Ulrichs to Westphal
to Krafft-Ebing believed that
most men are born "normal" (i.e. heterosexual)
but that male inverts inherit some female mental
characteristic that makes them sexually attracted to
members of their own sex. Freud rejected the idea
and argued that the direction the sexual drive takes has
no necessary relationship to inherited sexual
characteristics.
Instead, Freud theorized,
all children are born polymorphously perverse - their
sexual desires can be drawn toward any object - and it is
their childhood experiences that cause their sex drive to
be directed to members of the opposite or the same
sex. Freud did not condemn homosexuals or other
"perverts" and he was skeptical that
homosexuality could be cured, but Three Essays continued
the psychiatric tradition of labeling non-heterosexual
sexuality "perversions" and
"aberrations". One section of the book
even gives child-rearing tips to help parents lead their
children to "normal" heterosexual adjustment.
Since Freud rejected
hereditarian theories of the causes of homosexuality, he
also rejected the notion that homosexuals or inverts
are necessarily feminine. According to Freud,
whether a boy grows up to have a masculine or feminine
personality has nothing to do with the direction of his
sexual desire. Thus, depending on his upbringing, a
boy can develop into an effeminate heterosexual, a
masculine homosexual, or some other combination of gender
and sexuality.
Sadly, Freud's own
relatively benign view of the "perversions" was
lost on his followers. By the 1950s, American
psychoanalysts universally agreed that homosexuality is a
mental illness and used their considerable influence to
support the mistreatment of gay and lesbian people. |
