ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the question of how we may challenge heteronormativity in psychoanalytic theory and practice. It begins by drawing out some key ideas and themes from queer theory. Queer theory offers a toolbox for challenging heteronormativity through providing a complex understanding of power relations and enabling meaningful and effective resistance to them, especially in relation to gender and sexual identity. The chapter discusses the aspects of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis with reference to the individual and social construction of the experiences of persons with a minority sexual identity. It describes the complex and often ambivalent relation between psychoanalysis and minority sexual identity and begin to think through what queerying Freud might mean for the practice of psychoanalysis with sexual minority patients/clients. Freud's position on homosexuality was complex and contradictory and this probably reflected his own feelings about sexuality along with the prevailing constructions of homosexuality at the time he was working.
