Page "Conversion therapy" Paragraph 18

Anna Freud reported the successful treatment of homosexuals as neurotics in a series of unpublished lectures.

In 1949 she published “ Some Clinical Remarks Concerning the Treatment of Cases of Male Homosexuality ” in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.

In her view, it was important to pay attention to the interaction of passive and active homosexual fantasies and strivings, the original interplay of which prevented adequate identification with the father.

The patient should be told that his choice of a passive partner allows him to enjoy a passive or receptive mode, while his choice of an active partner allows him to recapture his lost masculinity.

She claimed that these interpretations would reactivate repressed castration anxieties, and childhood narcissistic grandiosity and its complementary fear of dissolving into nothing during heterosexual intercourse would come with the renewal of heterosexual potency.