ABSTRACT
Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber has provided us with a number of potentially fruitful avenues for discussion. Her clinical material is very rich and intriguing, especially the layers of meaning that emerged one by one in her patient’s understanding of his sexual orientation and conditions for sexual arousal. The material in her chapter is central to the theme of this book: the progression of theoretical models of sexuality since Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905d). She asks us to consider the material in at least two different ways: the first, surely, as a part of highlighting the theoretical shifts in understanding sexuality and especially the role of early attachments and object relations in defining the range and depth of sexual orientation. In her first perspective she presents us with a number of provocative hypotheses about the developmental precursors of her patient’s sexual perversion; and especially she asks us to consider maternal depression as one of the precursors we must consider in sexual development. The second perspective she urges us to consider is how this kind of case material and other similar material can be used to inform the distinction she makes between conceptual and empirical research perspectives. Asking us to consider the translational efforts between the two approaches, she also asks how 75contemporary models of memory and learning at a neural level may be useful for our understanding of enduring patterns of behaviour and of personal narrative.
