ABSTRACT
It is well known that the man who is unable to permit himself to become aware of desires for sexual relations with other men may, in the struggle against such awareness, become paranoid. While probably only a few diehards would still maintain that the struggle against the awareness of homosexual impulses is the etiology in the paranoid psychoses, most experienced psychiatrists will on occasion have seen patients who became grossly paranoid in the midst of such a struggle. One can scarcely be satisfied with the explanation that it is the awareness of social disapproval of homosexuality in our society that produces the paranoid reaction. If homosexuals are not psychotic or barely keeping themselves from being overtly psychotic, then one cannot force one’s theories by saying that the threat or the presence of homosexual pleasures can in itself produce paranoidness.
