ABSTRACT
The term enactment is used in psychoanalysis to refer to unconscious symbolic repetitions of early trauma. Enactments, sexual or nonsexual, that occur between psychotherapists and patients, are also conceptualized as transference-countertransference collusions. As homosexuals Psychoanalysts have been maligned, marginalized, and pathologized for so long in the culture that they are reluctant to examine the psychological meanings of and functions served by our sexual orientations. Each of our idiosyncratic psychological configurations represents the “best” psychic package that can be put together given variables too numerable to ever be ferreted out. Sometimes the “best package” that can be put together supports healthy interpersonal relationships, and sometimes the package is not good enough and is rightly deemed pathological, regardless of orientation. There are people for whom the particular dynamics of their heterosexual orientations are pathological. Similarly, there are people for whom the particular dynamics of their homosexual orientations are pathological.
