ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the treatments of some boys who had marked difficulty with being boys. Sigmund Freud’s formulations about bisexuality and gender development in boys are central to psychoanalytic theory about how masculinity evolves. To return to Freud’s idea of biologic bisexuality: Boys’ gender development is currently seen to be influenced by anatomy and physiology toward masculinity. Freud, concomitant with his theory of bisexuality, did have a theory of the boy’s gender development. The chapter presents a case study of Gino and Ted. Gino, the child of immigrants from Latin America, was referred by a school psychologist because of “elective mutism.” Gino struggled with efforts to internalize his father’s values and his father’s image. Further investigation of Gino’s many remaining conflicts was curtailed when he was abruptly removed from therapy after his major symptom of elective mutism disappeared along with sexual identity confusion and concomitant misperceptions of time and space.
