ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis has been engaged with homosexuality from its inception, with Freud struggling manfully against the recognition of lesbianism in his 'Dora' case. His famous footnote added at the end of the case history is an explicit recognition of a blind spot that continued to trouble the vision of psychoanalysts for generations afterwards. Throughout the history of psychoanalysis there have been honourable exceptions to the benighted views and attitudes, as the gay rights movement has come into being and following the American Psychiatric Association's decision to exclude homosexuality from their list of psychiatric disorders. The disruption to heterosexist assumptions caused by queer theory has contributed to a much more celebratory account of homosexuality. This has produced an engagement of queer theory with psychoanalysis that is predominantly critical, psychoanalysis being seen as a theory and set of practices that rigidify rather than open up the sexual field.
