ABSTRACT
It is astonishing how little has been written in the psychoanalytic literature on this perhaps most frequent of all human relationships. The references which do exist are generally glancing, scanty, and en passant. It has been left mostly to the philosophers, novelists and poets, in whose domains, indeed, it has been far from neglected. Of the innumerable observations and pronouncements which could be culled from the latter, many, although pithy, might be considered by analysts as platitudes, or clichés, or sentimental, or perhaps as "corny". The patient, a young married man with several children, led an intense and secret life of overt homosexuality. He was electrified into treatment by an arrest, an event dimly brought about and even hoped for over a period of years. This served, in fact, as a very effective spur and as an ally to the analysis, which has for several years now followed a most productive and constructive course.
