The Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (version III
R) defines Narcissistic Personality Disorder as a "pervasive
pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), hypersensitivity to the
evaluation of others, and lack of empathy ..." On the
surface, narcissism has little to do with sexual orientation, but many
psychoanalysts from George Henry in the 1940s through Irving Bieber in
the '60s were convinced that homosexuality
results from clinical narcissism.
The supposition that
homosexuals are narcissists led psychiatrists to believe that gays have
childish emotions, are superficial in personality and social
relationships, and that adult love relationships are impossible between
members of the same sex. This strand of medicalization
reached its most hysterical apex in psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler's 1956 Homosexuality:
Disease or Way of Life, a book that labels homosexuals
"injustice collectors" who delight in frustrating their
doctors.
