ABSTRACT
McDougall sees female homosexuality as an attempt to resolve conflict between identity as a separate individual (subjective identity) and sexual identity. She summarises her theory thus: The manifold desires and conflicts which face every girl with regard to her father have, in women who become homosexual, been dealt with by giving him up as an object of love and desire, and by identifying with him instead. In other writings McDougall does imply this, along with the claim that not to accept the 'truth' of this 'reality' is perverse, albeit a necessary defence against an unbearable realisation. Psychic and material reality does not neatly or necessarily coincide, and the significance we give to aspects of material reality is a human creation – this applies to all pronouncements of what is reality. In the image of the father presented by McDougall's lesbian patients, there is no expression of desire or love for him.
