Modern psychoanalytical research has well documented that when healthy parent-child bonding does not occur in early childhood, a deficit or "hunger" for love and security is created. It is especially damaging when the child and parent of the same sex do not effectively bond (for whatever reasons). The child's identity and security in gender role will not properly develop. This in turn will affect - perhaps even sabotage - future relating with peers of both the same and opposite sex. In such cases the child is often unable to conform to, or be comfortable with expected gender role performance. This sense of  'difference' further alienates the child from engaging in satisfying relationships which should serve to solidify security and identity.

The resulting hunger for love and security is painful and the need for identity completion makes the child very vulnerable. A child in this situation is driven or compelled to compensate in some way for what is 'missing'. Typically the child emotionally detaches from the same sex parent (abandons hope) and focuses onto the next perceived source of emotional and identity securing nourishment: same sex peers. This pre-homosexual condition emerges as exaggerated yearnings toward the same sex: a desire to be wanted, cherished and protected (legitimate needs that the parental bond should have satisfied). Yet due to insecurity and a sense of inadequacy, here to, effective same sex bonding does not occur. The child is attracted to and admires, yet is fearful and envious of the same sex. Consequently, a same sex fixation develops, resulting in arrested development toward heterosexuality. Eventually the exaggerated and symptomatic emotional dependence on the same sex becomes "sexualised" with the onset of puberty, or earlier if the child has been prematurely sexualised due to molest or imprinted exposure to pornography. (This dependence or fixation is not to be confused with typical and temporary teen infatuation.) In this example, this type of psychologically driven homosexuality is a faulty attempt to satisfy legitimate, non-sexual security and identity needs. While this simplified and general view does not represent every homosexual, it is true (based on client histories) for a majority of 'stereotypical' homosexuals. Ultimately, homosexuality is not so much about "love" or "sex". It is about need.

Understanding this, it is obvious then, that rejecting homosexual persons is a tragic mistake. Indeed, love, understanding and affirmation is what they need. Yet accepting and loving the homosexual person does not mean that we, in mistaken compassion, declare homosexuality to be "normal".  

 

There are those who would argue that homosexuality cannot be changed, nor should it need to be. What do you say?

After two decades of pro-gay influence in the American Psychoanalytic Association, the concept of offering treatment for those unhappy with their homosexual orientation has practically been abandoned. Until recently, therapists of the last 25 years were given little training beyond encouraging their homosexually-oriented clients to embrace that orientation as the only realistic route to mental health and happier living. (Many of my clients have suffered greatly as a consequence of such counsel). The assumption is that homosexual orientation cannot be modified to any degree. And in the age of western political correctness, gay activists would add that such orientation should not need to be changed. Regardless of one's life philosophy, the fact remains: not all who are homosexually-oriented want to be. They do not wish to be identified by, nor be driven by homosexual desires which distress them. Relinquishing themselves to such impulses will never be tolerable, due to moral convictions or quite simply an unwillingness to be homosexual for other reasons.  
 

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