ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a gay male psychosexual development and adult sexuality as it is influenced by proscriptions of the real world. Sigmund Freud shocked the world with ideas about sexuality in infants and children, but as psychoanalysis evolved its central focus on sexuality declined, even for adults. Oedipal rejection with scorn for the child's same sex romantic desires, or with withdrawal of the parent who is desired, is an empathic failure that can add to feelings of shame, condemnation, and isolation. In Freud's view, the dramatic turn that sexuality takes at puberty, and a point of potential difficulty, is the coming together of the two 'currents' of the libido. At puberty, the sensual current joins the affectionate current, and the libido is no longer innocent of its sexual aims. In clinical work, attention to shame and anxiety inherent in conflicts over desires for intimacy and outlawed sexuality will help with working through such conflicts, particularly in shame-based transferences.
