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.

Richard C. Friedman and Jennifer I. Downey

Part 1: Theoretical/Developmental
1. Sexual Fantasies in Men and Women
2. Genetic Influences on Sexual Orientation
3. Psychoendocrinology and Sexual Orientation
4. Psychoendocrinology and Role Behavior
5. Freud, Oedipus, and Homosexuality
6. Toward a Revised Formulation of Male Oedipal Aggression
7. Psychobiology of Late Childhood: Significance for Developmental Psychoanalytic Theory
8. Female Homosexuality: Classical Psychoanalytic Theory Reconsidered
Part 2: Clinical
9. Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, and the Negative Therapeutic Reaction
10. Internalized Homophobia, Pathological Grief, and High-Risk Behavior in a Gay Man with Multiple Psychiatric Disorders
11. Internalized Homophobia and Gender-Valued Self-Esteem in the Psychoanalysis of Gay Patients
12. Homophobic Parents
13. Psychopathology, Suicidality, and Homosexuality: New Developments
14. Coming Out at Eighty-Four: The Psychotherapeutic Treatment of Internalized Homophobia in a Lesbian Patient
15. Sexual Orientation and Psychoanalysis: Problems and Controversies
16. The Model of Homosexuality as Psychopathology: Science and Psychoanalysis