ABSTRACT
The pathological model of homosexuality had adverse consequences for gay/lesbian people with regard to immigration policy, child custody, federal employment, and in many other areas as well. C. Socarides viewed predominant or exclusive homosexuality as a pathological response to unresolved preoedipal conflicts. The psychoanalytic community was involved in a struggle with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Committee about the appropriate theoretical substructure of the entire psychiatric nomenclature. The vast majority of psychoanalytic institute faculty throughout the United States accepted the models about homosexuality advanced by Charles Socarides as being valid. Revision of psychoanalytic ideas about homosexuality resulted—at least in part—from an increasingly enthusiastic attitude of organized psychoanalysis about research. During the 1990s the pathological model of homosexuality was formally abandoned by American psychoanalysis. The literature about homosexuality and bisexuality contains many examples of authors calling a behavior by the same name, “homosexuality,” but actually discussing quite different phenomena.
