ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses some recurrent questions that arise regarding the notion of 'lesbian identity' in relation to psychoanalytic theory and practice. Lesbians are specified in many psychoanalytic theories as having made the 'wrong' parental identifications, with ensuing 'deviant' identities, especially gender ones. The silence of psychoanalysis on the historical relativity of its own discourse is striking, in this respect as in many others. Michel Foucault provides an account of the position of psychoanalysis in relation to conceptions of sexuality. The concept of identification plays a crucial role in psychoanalytic theory, particularly in the elaboration of ego development, and in the development of gender identity and sexual identity. Sigmund Freud put forward a specific account of the development of identification, in which he claims that it is the 'original form' or 'earliest expression of an emotional tie with another person'.
