My name is Sam Vaknin and I'm a columnist in Brussels morning and today we're going to discuss my favorite topic.
Sex. Or more precisely, homosexuality.
In the face of fierce opposition by the Christian Orthodox Church and other conservative forces, Greece just passed a law legalizing same-sex marriage and parenting.
The use of the word marriage may be historically inaccurate. Union would have been better.
But should homosexuals be allowed to serve as parents?
What do we know about homosexuality to start with?
A growing body of scientific evidence links the etiology of homosexuality to prenatal hormonal imbalances and to the presence of endocrine disruptors.
In other words, it has a biological foundation, biological template.
And still, though genetically predisposed, homosexual behaviors, mate selection, and sexual scripts are probably acquired. The outcome of environment and nurture rather than nature.
The jury is still out, admittedly.
Recent studies in animal sexuality serve to dispel two common myths, that sex is exclusively about reproduction, and that homosexuality is an unnatural sexual preference.
It now appears that sex is also about recreation as it frequently occurs out of the mating season and with no reason for procreation. And same-sex copulation and bonding are common in hundreds of species, from bonobo apes to gulls, seagulls.
Moreover, homosexual couples in the animal kingdom are prone to behaviors commonly and erroneously attributed only to heterosexuals.
The New York Times reported in its February 7th, 2004 issue about a couple of gay penguins who are desperately and recurrently seeking to incubate eggs together.
In the same article, Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name, Bruce Bagemihl, author of the groundbreakingBiological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, defines homosexuality as any of these behaviors between members of the same sex, long-term bonding, sexual contact, courtship displays, or the rearing of young.
Still, that a certain behavior occurs in nature, certain behavior is natural, does not render it moral.
Infanticide, patricide, suicide, gender bias and substance abuse are all to be found in various animal species.
It is futile to argue for homosexuality or against it based on zoological observations. Ethics is about surpassing nature, not about emulating it.
The more perplexing question remains, what are the evolutionary and biological advantages of recreational sex and homosexuality?
Surely both entail a waste of scarce resources.
Convoluted explanations such as the ones preferred by Marlene Zuk, homosexuals contribute to the gene pool by nurturing and raising young relatives.
These explanations defy common sense, experience, and the calculus of evolution.
There are no field studies that show conclusively or even indicate that homosexuals tend to raise and nurture their younger relatives more than straights do.
Moreover, the arithmetic of genetics would rule out such a stratagem. If the aim of life is to pass on one's genes from one generation to the next, the homosexual would have been far better off raising his own children who carry forward half his DNA rather than his nephew or niece, with whom he shares merely one quarter of his genetic material.
An often overlooked fact is that recreational sex and homosexuality have one thing in common. They do not lead to reproduction.
Homosexuality may therefore be a form of pleasurable sexual play. It may also enhance same-sex bonding and train the young to form cohesive, purposeful groups, in the army and boarding school for example.
Furthermore, homosexuality amounts to the culling of 10 to 15% of the gene pool in each generation. The genetic material of the homosexual is not propagated and is effectively excluded from the big roulette of life.
Growers of anything from cereals to cattle similarly use random culling to improve their stock.
As mathematical models show, such repeated mass removal of DNA from the common brew seems to optimize the species and increases resilience and efficiency.
It is ironic to realize that homosexuality and other forms of non-reproductive pleasure-seeking sex may be key evolutionary mechanisms and strategies and integral drivers of population dynamics.
Reproduction is but one goal among many equally important end results. Heterosexuality is but one strategy among few optimal solutions.
Studying biology may yet lead to greater tolerance for the vast repertory of human sexual foibles, preferences, orientations and predilections.
Back to nature in this case may be forward to civilization.
Ever since I published my ill-fated video about the othering problem in homosexuality, I've been flooded by a torrent of beseeching messages from mostly repentant homosexuals.
They ask me, are all homosexuals narcissists?
No, they're not, of course, not by a long shot.
They ask me, are all narcissists homosexuals?
Well, that would come as a surprise to the overwhelming vast majority of narcissists who are heterosexual.
They ask me, since homosexuals, according to you, have an othering problem, possess an othering problem, does it mean that they are mentally ill?
No, it does not. Narcissists have an othering problem. Homosexuals have an othering problem, but it doesn't mean that homosexuals are narcissists or vice versa. It also doesn't mean that an othering problem is a mental illness.
The othering problem is like temperature. You could have temperature when you have, I don't know, the flu, you could have temperature when you have tuberculosis or pneumonia. Temperature is a symptom. It's not a disease.
Similarly, the othering problem is a symptom of some underlying psychodynamic, some other underlying process, and it occurs also in perfectly healthy and normal people.
My name is Sam Vaknin. I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited, and a much tortured professor of clinical psychology.
Let us start with some definitions.
The word object in some schools of psychology known as the object relations schools and in some psychodynamic schools and even in some variants of psychoanalysis, the word object simply means another person.
So we have object relations, interpersonal relationships with other people. So object equals other, another person.
Othering is a process that I've described. And othering simply means that you are able to recognize the externality and separateness of an object of another person.
In other words, if you come across someone else, some other person, in your life, in an environment, you're able to recognize that that other person is not you, is external to you, is not part and parcel of your internal word, is separate from you. And this is healthy othering.
So typically all of us other objects. All of us direct our othering at external objects.
But early on in life we start by othering internal objects.
It's a process of dissociative estrangement. We begin to identify internal objects as if they were external, as if they were separate to us, not us.
This ability to estrange ourselves from ourselves, this ability to say, this is me, this is not me, even though initially, erroneously, is directed at internal objects, even though it involves dissociation and other essentially defense mechanisms.
Despite this, the ability to begin to put some distance between you and an internal object, to realize that the internal object is not you, however mistakenly, because the internal object is you.
But this very process of estrangement, this very process of othering internal objects, is a kind of training ground. It's a boot camp.
By othering internal objects, children, infants actually, learn to other external objects.
They practice othering on internal objects and then they use othering, they direct the othering process at external objects, which is normal and healthy.
An example of othering of internal objects is the othering of the mother introject.
The child or the infant has an image of the mother, an introject of the mother, an internal object that represents the mother in his or her mind, and then the child divorces this internalthat represents the mother in his or her mind, and then the child divorces this internal object, puts distance between itself and this internal object.
The child begins to realize that mother is not me and I am not mother, the symbiosis breaks the magic, the enchantment, and suddenly mother is out there, mother is out there internally.
The child begins to alienate itself, to estrange itself from the internal object that represents mother.
But slowly, inexorably, gradually, incrementally, the child begins to other mother, the real mother, the external mother, the external object that is mother.
The child seamlessly transitioned from othering the internal object of mother to othering the external object of mother.
Similarly, in the development of pathological narcissism, the false self emerges. And then there are two selves for a while. There's a false self and the true self.
The false self gradually takes over and when it takes over it others the true self, begins to treat the true self as if it were not authentic, as if it were not part of the individual, as if it were external in some way.
The false self then proceeds to devalue the true self and ultimately to discard it, a dynamic that is replicated later in all interpersonal relationships of the narcissist with other people.
The narcissist creates an internal object that represents you in his mind, and then the false self, others, this internal object, begins to treat this internal object as some kind of interloper or intruder or invader or enemy, persecutory object.
He devalues it and discards it.
But the initial process is the fight, the battle, the asymmetrical battle between the weakened and feeble, tortured, traumatized and abused true self and the triumphantly emergent false self.
The false self uses othering in order to push the true self out of consciousness and away and then devalue and discard it.
These are examples of othering within the internal world, within the inner landscape.
Most people, healthy, mature, adult, normal people, graduate from internal othering to external othering, from the othering of internal objects to the othering of external objects.
Narcissists, borderlines, people with other mental illnesses, remain stuck at the internal othering stage, essentially.
Now, narcissists, homosexuals, other people, experience what I call an othering failure.
An othering failure is an inability to tell that an external object is actually external and separate to the self, an inability to put a boundary between the self and an external object, an inability to say, I end here and the world begins here. This is where the world ends and I begin.
These boundaries are very fuzzy, very problematic.
And so there's an inability to realize, to accept, to digest, and to assimilate the knowledge that someone out there, some other person, is actually external to you, is actually not you, is actually separate from you.
Of course, rationally and cognitively, you know all these things, but you're unable to experience them.
There are no core emotional correlates. You are unable to react emotionally as if that other person were really external and separate.
In your mind, external people, people out there, external objects are actually extensions, figments, elements, internal objects, representations, avatars, and so on so forth.
And this is called othering failure.
Othering failure is a complex phenomenon because it involves other types of failure.
For example, the failure to contextualize.
Now, in psychology there are no facts. A fact depends crucially, or the content of the fact, depends crucially on the context.
Take for example nudity. Nudity in a hospital is not sexual. Nudity in sex is sexual.
Here we have the same fact, nudity, but it is the context that provides us with the cues as to how to react, how to behave, and how to feel. We feel aroused in the bedroom when we are confronted with nudity, but we feel maybe disgusted in the hospital when we are confronted with the very same nudity. So context matters. Othering requires context. If someone is unable, someone is incapacitated in the sense that he or she cannot create the appropriate context within which to embed the external object, then it would be very difficult to tell that the object is indeed external. If you lack context, how could you tell that something is external? Maybe it's a hallucination. Maybe you're imagining things. Maybe you're dreaming. You need context. This context is what we call reality.
So othering failure involves an impaired reality testing, an inability to generate on the fly context which makes sense, her minutic context, context which makes sense of the existence of objects as either external or internal. Consequently, there is a failure of empathy. You are unable, people with othering failure are also lacking in empathy. They have deficient empathy because they are unable to perceive the separateness and externality, personal autonomy, and independence and agency of an external object. If an object is not external, then it's not independent, it's not autonomous, it's not agentic, it's not, it's not, it's, and it doesn't deserve any consideration, it's internal, it's you. So you don't need to exert any special effort and this undermines empathy
but having said all this the failure of othering is not a bug. It's a feature. It is of course not common. It is of course much better to be able to other appropriately, normally in a healthy manner. All this is true. One might even say that it's pathological, but that's debatable. Still it is a feature. It tends to reason that othering failures are biologically determined. They're definitely the outcomes of early childhood trauma, abuse and other adverse circumstances.
But there must exist some genetic or hereditary predisposition to develop othering failure.
Othering failure in itself is not a problem. It's just a psychodynamic fact. It is true that othering failure is a feature of marsticism. But it is also a feature in other mental health issues. It is also a feature in otherwise perfectly healthy people with insecure attachment styles. It is also a feature in various subclinical personality styles which do not amount to any mental illness or mental health pathology.
It is a feature, not a bug. It's a dimension, it's a descriptor.
So if you come across a perfectly normal and healthy person who is unable to commit, unable to attach, is avoidant and dismissive, is anxious, fearful. That is someone in all probability who suffers from an othering failure. But this othering failure doesn't make this kind of individual mentally ill. He doesn't need, there's no need to cure him of anything. That's who he is.
Or you come across an A-Horn, someone with a narcissistic personality style, but not a narcissistic personality disorder. This kind of person suffers or endures an attenuated form of othering failure. This kind of person has difficulties to perceive the externality and separateness and the rights of other people around him.
And yet, a narcissistic personality style is not a mental illness. It should not be treated or cured. That's just who the person is. In other words, the other in failure and other in failure is a feature in many types of personality, most of which are very healthy and normal and common. And when you have a pathology, a mental health illness or pathology, a mental health disorder, that includes many other issues, critical issues like a total lack of empathy, exploitativeness, virulent envy, a lack of functioning self, identity diffusion or identity disturbance. When you have this package deal, an element in it is othering failure. But othering failure is not the reason for pathological narcissism. It's just one manifestation of it, one aspect of it.
And exactly like a knife, you could kill with a knife, or you can spread butter with a knife. Same with othering failure.
Othering failure at the hands of a narcissist becomes a manipulative Machiavellian abusive tool.
Othering failure with healthy normal people could lead to some friction, some difficulties in interpersonal relationships, an insecure attachment style, but nothing much more than that.
Similarly, in homosexuality, othering failure, the othering failure of homosexuals defines their sexual style, defines their ability to derive identity from highly specific types of interactions.
It is not a pathology and homosexuality is not a mental illness in any way shape or form.
That othering failure is common to narcissism and to homosexuality does not make the two one and the same.
Othering failure predisposes narcissists to engage people via the shared fantasy and then abuse them essentially for their own needs.
The other failure in homosexuality predisposes homosexuals to behave in highly specific psychosexual ways with potential and actual partners in order to derive some sense of identity.
And in this sense, there is a similarity to borderline personality disorder, actually, not to narcissism, because borderlines engage in external regulation.
It is true that the narcissist regulates his or her sense of self-worth externally, but the borderline regulates all her internal processes externally. It's a total external regulation.
The homosexual has elements of external regulation deriving his or her identity from the outside, especially from a sexual partner.
And so it's a highly idiosyncratic way of identity formation coupled with a highly specific sexual or psychosexual style and all this is the outcome of othering failure.
End of story. No pathology here. Just a style, specific style. No mental illness, just the way they are.
The vast majority of homosexuals are perfectly healthy and perfectly normal.
And like every other group in the population, like every other cohort, some of them are mentally, some of them have personality disorders, some of them have insecure attachment styles like other people, homosexual and heterosexual.
There's no need to pathologize homosexuality. This is a thing of the 70s, you know? We've progressed since then. We know a lot more.
Our homosexuality is biologically determined almost 100%. The biology of the homosexual predisposes the homosexual to develop othering failure in life.
But that's just an identity determinant, just a dimension of who the homosexual is. It is not a psychopathology.
I'm Sam Vaknin and I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.
Research failed to find any substantive difference between the psychological makeup of a narcissist who happens to have homosexual preferences and a heterosexual narcissist.
There is, however, one element which might be unique to homosexuals. The fact that their self-definition hinges on their sexual identity.
Heterosexuals usually would not use their sexual preferences to define themselves almost fully.
Homosexuality has been inflated to the level of a subculture, separate psychology, or a myth. This is typical of persecuted minorities.
However, he does have an influence on the individual. Preoccupation with body and sex makes most homosexual narcissists, somatic narcissists.
Moreover, the homosexual makes love to a person of the same sex. In a way, he makes love to his reflection.
And in this respect, homosexual relations are highly narcissistic and auto-erotic affairs.
The somatic narcissist directs his libido, his sex drive, at his own body. The cerebral narcissist concentrates on the intellect.
The somatic narcissist cultivates his body, nourishes it, is often a hypochondriac, dedicates an inordinate amount of time to the needs of his body, both real and imaginary.
It is through his body that the somatic narcissist tracks down and captures his sources of narcissistic supply.
The supply that the somatic narcissist so badly requires is derived from his shape, from his build, from his muscles, from his profile, from his beauty, from his physical attractiveness and irresistibility, from his health, or from his age.
The somatic narcissist downplays narcissistic supply directed at other traits of his, even at his intellect.
The somatic narcissist uses sex to reaffirm his prowess, his attractiveness, irresistibility, his youth.
Love to him is synonymous with sex, and the somatic narcissist focuses his learning skills on the sexual act, on the conquest, on the foreplay, and the coital aftermath.
Seduction becomes addictive because it leads to a quick succession of narcissistic supply sources.
Naturally, boredom, a form of transmuted self-aggression, boredom sets in once the going gets routine.
Routine is counter-narcissistic by definition because it threatens the narcissist's sense of uniqueness.
An interesting side issue relates to transsexuals.
Philosophically, there is little difference between a narcissist who seeks to avoid his true self and positively to become his false self and a transsexual who seeks to discard his true gender and positively become a member of another gender.
But this similarity, though superficially appealing, is questionable. People sometimes seek sex reassignment because of advantages and opportunities which they believe are enjoyed by the other sex.
This rather unrealistic, fantastic view of the other is faintly narcissistic. It includes elements of idealized overvaluation, of self-preoccupation, and of objectification of one's self. It demonstrates a deficient ability to empathize and some grandiose sense of entitlement.
Most transsexuals say, I deserve to be taken care of, or of omnipotence. Some of them say, I can be whatever I want to be, despite nature and God, and defiance of nature and God.
This feeling of entitlement is especially manifest in some gender dysphoric individuals who aggressively pursue hormonal or surgical treatment.
They feel that it is their inalienable right to receive such treatment on demand and without any strictures or restrictions.
For instance, some transsexuals refuse to undergo psychological evaluation or treatment as a condition for the hormonal or surgical treatment.
It is interesting to note that both narcissism and gender dysphoria are early childhood phenomena.
This could be explained by problematic primary objects, parents, dysfunctional families, or a common genetic or biochemical problem. It is too early to say which the research is meager.
As yet, there isn't even an agreed typology of gender identity disorders, let alone an in-depth comprehension of their sources.
A radical view, preferred by Ray Blanchard, seems to indicate that pathological narcissism is more likely to be found among non-core, egodystonic, autogynephilic transsexuals, and among heterosexual transvestites. It is less manifest in core, egosyntonic, homosexual transsexuals.
Autogynephilic transsexuals are subject to an intense urge to become the opposite sex, and thus to be rendered the sexual object of their own desire.
In other words, they are so sexually attracted to themselves that they wish to become both lovers in the romantic equation, the male and the female.
Becoming a male or a female is a fulfillment of the ultimate narcissistic fantasy with a false self as a fetish, a narcissistic fetish.
The transsexual by transforming himself into the opposite sex provides himself with a closed space, closed universe in which he and he alone is the lover of himself in his role as male and female.
Autogynephilic transsexuals start off as heterosexuals and end up as either bisexual or homosexual.
By shifting his, her attentions to men, the male autogynephilic transsexual proves to himself that he has finally become a true and desirable woman.
The narcissistic aspiration, if we ever heard one.
Today we are going to discuss homosexuality from a new angle.
But before we do so, we need to agree on a common terminology, and then we need to get rid of a few persistent, stubborn myths, perpetuated, propagated, well, by self-styled experts online.
Start with the terminology. Sex is determined by one's genitalia reproductive organs and other secondary sex signs in the body.
Sex therefore is corporeal, it's bodily.
Gender, however, is socially and culturally determined. It's a construct. It's performative. It's acquired mostly via imitation and education and acculturation and socialization.
So when we talk about sex, there are males and females. When we talk about gender, there is men and woman, and they are not coterminous.
You could have any set of genitalia and be a man or masculine. Similarly, you can have any set of secondary sex signs or sex symbols and still be a woman.
So the correlation between your body and your gender, your sex and your gender, is very high because society and culture condition us to associate sexuality and gender role or gender functioning, but it doesn't have to be this way.
Next, homosexuality is the physical sexual attraction to the same sex. It therefore comprises lesbianism. Lesbianism is homosexuality in females.
So when I say homosexuality, when I use the word homosexuality in this video, I'm referring to both, both males and females. Although, of course, homosexual males and homosexual females can choose any gender role. You could have a masculine homosexual male or a feminine homosexual male and vice versa in lesbianism or female homosexuality.
Now, homosexuality is not the same as homo-romanticism. Homo-romanticism is the romantic attraction to the same sex.
You could be homosexual, sexually attracted to the same sex, but heteroromantic, romantically attracted to the opposite sex. This absolutely can and does happen.
So bear all this in mind when we venture forth into this exploration of homosexuality, the physical, biological, sexual attraction to the same sex.
This does not imply, homosexuality does not imply automatically any specific gender role, nor does it mean that there is also homo-romanticism. It's a very fluid area as you can see.
Now, to the myths.
Myth number one.
Refrigerator mothers cause autism, dead mothers in the metaphorical sense, absent, depressed, selfish, etc., etc.
That is nonsense. Autism is a neurological condition.
I'm not sure if it's neurodegenerative in any sense or neurodivergent, but it definitely has to do with the neurological system and the brain, especially the brain.
So if you want to use value-laden terms or judgmental terms, you could say that this is an abnormality of the brain. If not, you can say that the autistic person is not neurotypical.
By which other case may be, autism has nothing to do with bad parenting, upbringing, or any of these 1950s nonsense.
Similarly, homosexuality has nothing to do with strong mothers and weak absent fathers.
This has been debunked decisively even in the psychoanalytic literature where this nonsense has started, pernicious nonsense.
There's a guy called Isay, I-S-A-Y, read his work. This is totally debunked.
Homosexuality has nothing to do with family background, parental performance, gender roles of the parents, none of this.
Homosexuality is biologically determined.
It doesn't mean that homosexuality doesn't have a psychological side. Everything has a psychological side. Even diabetes, even cancer, even tuberculosis, even COVID-19. They all have a psychological sign because we are composite organisms. We have our biology and we have our psychology, which is the way we perceive some biological processes inside ourselves, the way we introspect.
But the cause, the etiology of homosexuality is almost 100% biological.
So forget all the nonsense about weak mothers, absent fathers, strong mothers, hateful fathers, I mean, forget all this nonsense. This is 100 years old. These are 100 years old myths that have been long thrown into the garbage can of history.
Next, there is no such thing, at least we couldn't prove that there is such a thing, as contagion.
Homosexuality is not contagious. Transgenderism is not contagious, not socially and not in any other way.
Now, finally, mental illness. Homosexuality is not a mental illness.
Used to be defined as a mental illness in the early editions of the diagnostic and statistical manual removed in 1973 and four from the diagnostic and statistical manual never to make an appearance again. And sexuality is not mental illness. Autism spectrum disorder is not a mental illness.
These are biological, biological kind of causes or biological antecedence of a state of mind. We'll come to it a bit later.
Freud himself stated recognition of the organic factor in homosexuality does not relieve us of the obligation of studying the psychic processes connected with its origin.
I beg to disagree with Freud and psychoanalysis on this.
Now, I've been repeatedly accused of over-hyping psychoanalysis, psychodynamic theories and object-relations theories, which are, according to self-styled armchair experts, passe.
There's no such thing as passe in psychology. Some things are valid, some things are not valid. Regardless of when they've been described.
Satanism has been described in 1869. It's still very much valid.
And it is also not true that I'm exclusively focused on these schools of thought in psychology. You can find on my channel videos about internal family systems, social learning, neuroscience and the latest cutting edge, the bleeding edge.
So in this particular case of homosexuality, I am completely at odds with all the psychoanalytic literature, bar none.
I think they got it wrong. I think they are prejudiced. I think they were under the influence, a lot of alcohol maybe, but for example, social mores and conventions. I think they didn't do their homework.
All their observations are speculations. They're not based on any studies. They're not based on any database of objective information.
And so psychoanalysis is a really, really bad source for understanding homosexuality. It's a theology and its development.
And I am most definitely not going to refer to any writing of Freud's or others on psychoanalysis, well into the 1970s and 1980s, casting homosexuality as a deviance or a perversion or what have you.
Now, we all start life as pansexual.
At a very early age before the onset of sexual differentiation we are all simultaneously male and female as far as sexual orientation feminine and masculine we are undifferentiated we are a big mass of potentialities.
We could become heterosexual. We could become homosexual.
No one knows.
Well into the third year of life, we are pansexual.
But then what happens is, owing to interactions with members of the same sex and members of the opposite sex.
If you're a boy, mother, if your girl, father, and so on and so forth.
We integrate all these sexual predilections. We create a single nucleus, a single core, which is at the same time feminine and masculine, sexually, but also erotically, which is the psychological dimension of sexual attraction.
And then what happens, we differentiate. We develop a sexual orientation, a set of sexual preferences, sexual attraction, which become dominant. They prevail. They are manifested. and the rest remain repressed, latent.
So we all start off as homosexual and heterosexual, and then by age 3 or 4, we predominantly heterosexual or predominantly homosexual and the other propensity the other half the other potential the other possibility is repressed becomes latent.
So when ask, is he a latent homosexual? Of course he is, everyone is. Is he a latent heterosexual? Of course he is. Everyone is.
And that includes gays.
So everyone is everything at the same time. It's just that one mode is dominant and the other is recessive. One mode is occult, hidden, and one mode prevails and is manifested.
And this is not a nosological effect. This is not only about classification or taxonomy. This is real.
I read to you something from Freud, which I do agree with. I told you that I mostly disagree with psychoanalysis when it comes to homosexuality.
But Freud has written something very advanced for the age in his unfortunately named essay, the sexual aberrations.
Freud wrote that many homosexuals find homosexuality to be natural to them while other homosexuals rebel against it and consider it pathological.
Homosexuality may persist throughout life, it may go into temporary remission, be covert or overt, it may be a detour in the path of normal development, it may appear late in life after a long period of apparently heterosexual activity, and there may be oscillations between its overtness and covertness.
Freud also mentioned that a distressing or traumatic experience may lead one, especially women, into homosexual activity.
He noted that many homosexuals assert that they could never remember any attachment to the opposite sex from their earliest years.
But Freud mentioned that perhaps these individuals had only repress their positive heterosexual feelings, that is, Freud's prejudice from the turn of a century, Vienna.
Freud remarked that many homosexuals feel both homosexual and heterosexual arousal, and only at puberty, may a frail heterosexual adjustment be overrun by homosexual attachments.
So Freud covered the entire spectrum of the manifestations of the battle between homosexuality and heterosexuality in every human being.
In all of us, male or female, these orientations duke it out until one of them takes over and the other one is put to sleep. This is known as latency. We all latent homosexuals if we are heterosexual and latent heterosexuals if you're homosexual.
Which is why it is not safe for your wife to have a gay friend. Appropos my previous much contested video. Okay, just kidding. Next.
In my new work, I am putting an emphasis on the concept of othering, concept which was central to Lacan's work.
Remember, one of my previous videos, you can find links in the description to my previous videos about othering.
In one of our previous videos, I made clear that the other, the presence of the other, another person, object, it's known as object in psychology, which tells you a lot about psychology. Anyhow, the presence of the other triggers you, and then actualizes your potentials interactively.
You see, you have a potential to emote. You have a potential to feel an emotion. You have a potential to think something, cognitions. You have a potential to express your emotions in a highly specific way. Effects. You have a potential to behave in a variety of ways, behaviors. Even your unconscious primary processes are triggered somehow.
So when you're confronted with another human being, with another person, when another person enters your territory, your turf, your ambit, your remit, when you're in the presence of someone else, this triggers you.
It triggers you to actualize some of your potentials. It triggers you to actualize specific potential emotions. It triggers you to experience them, then to express them effectively, to think in a highly specific manner, which is responsive to the presence of the other to behave in ways which are reactive to the others behaviors etc.
So you could conceive of other people as catalysts, they catalyze in you reactions, they generate them in you.
Actually, Lacan went as far as saying that the unconscious is an internalization of other people. Other people are your unconscious and in object relations theory, everything is relational.
Definitely some of the mental health disorders defined in the ICD and the DSM are relational. Psychopathy, for example, antisocial personality disorder, but its very name anti-social demonstrates that it is a relational, socially determined behavior.
So other people are critical. They control your internal space. They make it happen in many ways.
Now when this triggering by other people becomes overwhelming, we get autism. Autism is the avoidance of others and the avoidance of the process of othering. Othering is the recognition of the existence of other people as external and separate entities, autonomous, agentic, self-efficacious, independent. This is othering.
The autistic person is incapable of othering because he or she is overwhelmed with stimuli coming from other people. They avoid autistic people, avoid othering. Same, by the way, applies to borderline personality disorder people. Okay, but today's focus is homosexuality. Homosexuality is, of of course a form of sexual orientation and as such it has a lot to do with what is known as sexual identity.
Sexual identity emerges in early childhood and it undergoes two processes. Process number one is integration. Process number two is differentiation, not necessarily in this order. Integrated and differentiated sexual identity is triggered and actualized similarly to all other processes. In short, to develop an integrated and differentiated sexual identity, you need to be exposed to objects. You need to be exposed to objects you need to be exposed to other people other people trigger in you stimulate in you the emergence of your sexual identity sexual identity is a complex construct, is a hyper construct. It includes emotions, cognitions, behaviors, and so and so forth. So you need other people to trigger this potential in you. Freud went as, Freud and others, many others, went as far, the psychoanalytic school and the object relation school, went as far as saying that other people determine your sexual identity, out of the field of all potential sexual identities, the presence of other people, their choices, their behaviors determine which of these potential sexual identities will coalesce, crystallize, integrate, differentiate, and become your sexual identity. So if you're exposed to one group of people, you're likely to your sexual identity. So if you're exposed to one set of, one group of people, you're likely to develop sexual identity A. If you're exposed to another setup, another combination, another dynamic between people, you are likely to develop sexual identity B. So they went, they took it to extremes.
I disagree. I think sexual identity is a potential, of course, because you remember, in early childhood, we are all pansexual. In early childhood, we possess all possible sexual identities as potentials. And yes, other people, the presence of other people, the behaviors of other people, the emotions of other people, interactions with other people, especially important other people, like mother and father and role models and teachers and peers, they to some extent determine your sexual identity, but not which sexual identity rather than how sexual identity. In other words, the presence of other people in your life, something known as object choice, the presence of other people determines not whether you will become heterosexual or homosexual. That is biologically determined. But how would you act as homosexual? How would you act as heterosexual? Social scripts. In some societies and cultures, homosexuality is frowned upon or even criminalized. So obviously the presence of other people has a massive impact on the latency of homosexuality, the expression of homosexuality, or the expression of heterosexuality. So I agree that sexual identity, the processes of selection of sexual identity out of the sea, the sea of possible potentials, the process of integrating various elements into a single heterosexual identity or homosexual identity, and then the process of differentiating, choosing that identity and becoming that identity. So I agree that all these processes are largely triggered from the outside by other people. The process of othering is at work here as well. It is by othering or through othering or via othering that we become the sexual beings that we are. Similar to other fields of life, how we emote, how we think, cognition, cognitive functioning. All these are determined by outsiders, how we think, cognition, cognitive functioning. All these are determined by outsiders, by the outside, by other people. This sexual identity is not an exception. Itoutsiders, by the outside, by other people.
This sexual identity is not an exception.
It is the outcome of othering.
If there is a problem with othering, then there would be a problem in a panoply of functionalities. There would be a problem in emoting, there would be a problem with empathy, there would be a problem with cognition, and there would be a problem with attention, and there would be a problem with sexual identity.
Othering is the defining crucial process for the emergence of a self. Maybe not a self, maybe an assemblage of self states. The model doesn't matter.
For the emergence of you, for you to become, you need to interact with other people. In the absence of other people, you never become, you never finalize, your work in progress.
Okay. So, other people in your life, starting with your mother and father and then many others, they determine not who you're going to become sexually they do not determine whether you'll be homosexual that is determined by your biology that is by the way absolutely beyond any doubt, forget all the rest of the nonsense, homosexuality is biological. So that is determined by your biology.
But what kind of homosexual are you going to be? How are you going to function as a homosexual? What would be the outward manifestations of your homosexuality, your emotionality, or hyper or hypo-emotionality, your cognitive processes functioning, all these are determined by others.
So your homosexuality is a biological template, but the way it manifests and is expressed is determined by the environment, the human environment.
Similar to genetics, genes are templates and they are expressed by being exposed to the environment. This is the science of epigenetics.
Okay.
What happens when there is a disruption or a failure in the formation of sexual identity, when there is what you could call sexual identity diffusion or sexual identity disturbance?
What are these things, first of all?
There are forms of narcissistic othering failures.
When the child is not allowed to other, when the child is not allowed to interact with other people, when the child, for example, is not allowed to separate from mother and become an individual, separation individuation, the process of othering is disrupted.
The child never transitions from narcissistic investment in the self, also known as narcissistic libido, the child neveremerges from narcissistic object choice in the sexual sense to other object choice to object libido.
So if the child is not allowed to practice othering, if the child is not allowed to regard other people as external and separate and potentially threatening, by the way, it's a very traumatic experience, if the child is not allowed to go through this, he's not encouraged by a mother who is a safe base, good enough mother and later on in life, father, if they discourage the child from taking on the world, exploring it, confronting reality, however bruising and painful it may be, then the child fails to develop othering skills and capacities.
He is incapable to other people. He's incapable of regarding other people as other people. He converts them into internal objects as a defensive mechanism.
So at that point, a child who experiences othering failures, a child who is incapable of othering other people, a child who is basically solipsistic, self-invested, narcissistically oriented, a child who is into himself or herself, a child who regards himself or herself as a sexual object. This is known as auto-erotism.
So this kind of child will fail to develop an integrated and differentiated sexual identity. It will develop a kaleidoscope of sexual identities and will keep oscillating between them, rotating, experimenting, but never really settling into a single, all-inclusive, mutually exclusive sexual identity.
Sexual identity diffusion, sexual identity disturbance, failure to form sexual identity formation failure, these are forms of narcissistic othering failures.
And in this case, there's not integrated or differentiated sexual identity.
This is a point where I strongly differ from classic psychoanalytic theories.
Freud and Fromm suggested that object choice, the object we choose to have sex with, the other person, is not about who we love, but about how we love the object.
So he said narcissistic object choice is not about who we love ourselves, but about how we love.
I completely disagree. It is about both. It's about both who we love and how we love.
The narcissist is incapable of loving another person. He is incapable of having object relations because he is incapable of othering the object.
He cannot perceive an external object as either external or separate. He cannot other the object. Therefore can definitely never have an object choice which is external to himself.
The narcissist chooses himself as the exclusive object choice.
And this, of course, is a major determinant of narcissistic object libido.
I mean, to say otherwise is you know.
Similarly I disagree with Freud 1905 when he wrote it seems probable that the sexual instinct is in the first instance independent of its object, nor is its origin likely to be due to the object's attraction.
Not true, I disagree.
The sexual instinct is shaped into a sexual orientation via object exposure and object choice, a process of othering.
It is totally relational. It's raw material.
So, in this sense I disagree that there is some sexual instinct which is well defined and clear and so on but it is independent of any object out there it's totally self-contained.
No, I don't think so.
Even when the child, the infant, is its own sexual object, there is a process of othering.
The process of othering in very, very early childhood leads to the formation of the self.
The self is perceived as the other.
The early child in a symbiotic bond with his mother, when the self emerges, the child perceives the self as a third party.
Not me, not mommy. Who is this thing? What is this thing?
The child others the self.
At the very beginning, the child has a traumatic relationship with the nascent self, because he doesn't perceive the self as him, his self.
He doesn't understand or realize that the self that is emerging is himself.
So even when the child is sexually cathected, emotionally and sexually invested in himself as the sole sexual object, there is still a process of othering, even I would say alienation and estrangement to the initial phase.
Homosexuality is about object choice. It's a failure of othering.
It is not only a narcissistic libidinal investment, one could even argue that it is not at all a narcissistic libidinal investment.
It's a failure to other people.
When the child fails to perceive other people as others, as external, as separate, as unique, as distinguishable, as out there, the child then reverts to himself.
The child says, there are no others. Everyone is just clones, a clone of me. There are, you know, 8 billion clones of me, or 4 billion, clones of me.
So from that moment on, the homosexual relation, homosexuality, the investment, the cathexis, it's all with oneself via the mediation of someone who looks like you.
So it is true that there is narcissistic libidinal investment, but this is not the core problem.
Because all humanity, all human beings go through a narcissistic libidinal investment phase.
Not everyone is homosexual.
AndIn homosexuality, sexuality is not only a problem of narcissistic libidinal investment. It's a failure of othering.
When you fail to other people, when you fail to perceive people as not you, everyone is you. And so you have sex with people who look like you.
Who are you? If you're men, you would have sex with people who look like you, who are you? If you're men, you would have sex with men because men are you. And you can't other people, you can't perceive them as others.
And so you would be having sex with yourself via the agency of another body.
The object in homosexuality is not loved only on account of its similarity of to what the subject is once was or hopes some time to become.
It's not only the similarity that's the problem here.
It's not that the homosexual says, oh, great, here's an external separate object that looks like me. I would like to have sex with him or with her.
It's not the case here the homosexual and the homosexual perceives the sexual object as himself there is a process of identification internalization and incorporation of the sexual object.
Now, this is not the same as narcissistic libidinal cathexis, or narcissistic libidinal investment.
No, it's not the same.
In narcissistic libidinal cathexis, or narcissistic libidinal investment, the child is erotically and sexually attracted to himself, to himself. He doesn't make a distinction. He says, I am my sexual object.
In homosexuality, the homosexual knows that the sex object is not himself, unless the homosexual is insane.
But a normal homosexual, mentally healthy homosexual, does not perceive his sex objects, his sex partners, as himself.
So it's not that there is a confusion here which creates narcissistic libidinal cathexis.
I'm in love with myself. I'm sexually attracted to myself.
No, it's not the case here. It's not really about similarity to, it's not that the homosexual perceives the object as himself.
But he perceives, he cannot perceive the object, the sex object, as other.
While the homosexual does not perceive the adult homosexual, does not perceive the sex object as himself, he also cannot perceive the sex object as other, as someone else.
It's kind of a twilight zone. Here's someone that looks exactly like me, reminds me of myself in some ways, but I know he's not me, but I also can't perceive him or her as external to me, as separate from me.
It's a kind of merger and fusion, automatic, instant sexual merger infusion.
Like heterosexuality, homosexuality is anaclitic. It's dependent on an external object to provide what the subject cannot himself be.
It's only that in homosexuality the external object is not perceived as external. It's perceived as an extension, as an instrument, as an internal object.
It's in this sense, it is narcissistic. In this limited sense of inability to other, the failure of othering.
Homosexuality is narcissistic, but it's not libidinally narcissistic. It's not the misperception of the other, of the sex partner, of the sex object as myself.
There's no such mistake here.
It is anaclitic. Homosexuality is anaclitic.
It's like looking for someone who can make me happy. Looking for someone who can please me sexually. Looking for someone who can give me something I don't have.
I cannot have sexual pleasure without that someone.
There is a realization of dependency upon an agent, however not othered, however not external and not separate.
And so there is a dependence on the object for providing what the subject cannot provide.
In the case of heterosexuality, the object, the sex object provides otherness. One of the main reasons for sexual arousal is the otherness of the partner.
When you perceive the sexual partner as not you, it's very sexually arousing. Otherness is a critical stimulant, aphrodisiac if you wish, in proper healthy sexual relations.
So in the case of heterosexuality, the external separate sexual object provides otherness, which of course you can never provide. You cannot be other.
Someone else needs to be other to you.
In the case of homosexuality, the external object is not perceived as external. The separate object is not perceived as separate, but it is perceived as external. The separate object is not perceived as separate, but it is perceived as sexual.
So it provides an integrated and differentiated sexual identity.
Homosexuality is an othering failure.
Consequently, homosexuals fail to generate an integrated and differentiated sexual identity, which is triggered by other people.
They do have a sexual identity, of course. But it is a sexual identity which is more innate and inert.
However, when they interact with a sexual object, homosexuals acquire from the object an integrated and differentiated sexual identity.
It's as if in homosexuality you need two. You need a couple to generate and engender a sexual identity, a full-fledged, fully working, integrated, differentiated sexual identity.
In a heterosexual, the sexual identity is self-generating, self-assembling, it does not depend at all on the presence of another person, although it is activated by the presence of another person.
In a homosexual, the very existence of a sexual identity is engendered, created by the presence of another person and activated by the presence of another person.
You could say simply that in homosexuality, the sexual identity is dormant, latent, which would explain perhaps why homosexuals have been found in studies to be a lot more promiscuous and a lot more sexually active than heterosexual.
In order to maintain a sense of continuity of sexual identity, homosexuals need to consume numerous sexual partners. It's the only way they could feel alive if you want sexually.
The other person is not othered. The homosexual cannot perceive the sexual partner as separate or distinct or unique. The homosexual perceives the sexual partner as part and parcel of his own sexual identity.
It would also explain why homosexuality is identity politics while heterosexuality is not.
It's not only about being a minority. Many homosexuals self-define via their homosexuality.
And it has nothing to do with being oppressed because this happens in Scandinavia and the East Coast in the United States, California, where there's no longer oppression of homosexuals, well, mostly.
So it's not a reaction to social oppression. It's, I think, much more deep.
I think homosexuals need other homosexuals to reawaken their sexual identity, activate it, and act on it.
And so they consume each other in sexual encounters just to maintain a continuance or continuity of sexual identity, whereas heterosexuals don't need this.
Now is this pathological? No. I'm not describing this as a pathology. I'm describing this as a failure in the process of othering.
Because when you other people effectively, when you are able to perceive other people as separate from you, distinct from you, not you, yes, this is the process of othering when there's you and not you.
In this case, you're not reliant on other people to be you. Other people cannot tell you to be you. There's you and not you. Othering implies that other people are not you and can never ever be you. You're reliant on yourself 100% to be you.
When othering fails, for example in narcissism, you are critically dependent on other people in order to be you.
Similarly, when othering fails, for example, in homosexuality, you are critically dependent on other people to be you sexually, your sexual identity. And yet, you are critically dependent on other people, but you cannot perceive them as separate, external, and other.
The continued failure of othering leads to repetition compulsion.
You need to do it again and again and again and again because you cannot other people, you cannot other other people, you cannot perceive other people as external and separate. You need to continue to interact with people all the time in the hope perhaps that one day you will be able to other them, which never happens.
But is homosexuality really a disturbance in othering? Is it a disturbance in the emergence of sexual identity, integrated and differentiated?
I think it is.
But to be a lot more precise, I think there's no differentiation failure in homosexuality, because homosexuals know that they're homosexuals. That's differentiation for them.
I think there's a failure of integration.
Homosexuality is an immature, integrated sexual identity, which has been differentiated but not integrated.
In the initial phase, when we are all pansexuals, we start by differentiating.
So, okay, we are all pansexuals, now let's see.
Actually, I think I'm heterosexual.
So then, differentiation is a break in the system.
Initially, the system includes homosexuality and heterosexuality. The system initially, up to age three, four years, the system initially is pansexual.
Then differentiation sets in and breaks the system. Now you are heterosexual.
But no one can survive with a broken system, psychological. So we have to reintegrate the parts. We have to create a hierarchy, a structure which accommodates our latent, recessive, repressed and suppressed sexual parts.
If we choose, if we start off as pansexuals and then we differentiate as heterosexuals, we now have a broken system. We are heterosexuals, but what to do with our homosexual parts?
So then we need to build the hyperstructure. We need to build a building, a structure, where the upper floors, the visible floors, the public facing floors, are heterosexual, and the basement is occupied by our abandoned homosexuality.
And this process is integration.
I think homosexuals differentiate as homosexuals, but then fail to integrate.
Because integration is crucially dependent on othering.
Integration is almost totally relational. Integration has to do with the ability to interact with other people in a way that informs you about, for example, society. Societal expectations, mores, conventions, sexual scripts, and so on.
Socialization and acculturation are critical to integration.
If you as a child fail to other, if you as a child were not allowed to perceive other people as not you, as separate from you, if you are not allowed to separate from mommy and to individuate, if you were not allowed to be in touch of reality, mother was overprotective, father was overprotective, then you as a child don't acquire the skills to regard others, other people, as out there, separate, external. And you are then incapable of learning anything from them.
The whole process of socialization and acculturation, these processes fail, they collapse.
And so the homosexual starts off like all of us, with a pansexual buffet of every non-sexual orientation.
He then differentiates. He becomes homosexual, or she becomes homosexual.
But what to do with the abandoned heterosexuality, only the environment, the human environment, can tell you what to do with it.
And if you are not capable of recognizing that there's anyone except you, that there's anyone out there, that there are entities that are not you, if you're incapable of this, you will never be able to integrate.
And so the homosexual is differentiated but not integrated and so the only way for the homosexual to experience sexual identity is via others.
By merging and fusing with others, even if for one night, by merging and fusing with others, the homosexual becomes complete and whole as far as the sexual identity.
He can now integrate it, if only for a few minutes or for a few hours. He can integrate it via the gaze of the sexual partner.
The homosexual perceives himself or herself through the gaze of the partner. And in this sense, it is a shared fantasy.
The failure to integrate is biology, not psychology.
In the case of pathological narcissism, the othering failure is the outcome of upbringing and so on, the same with homosexuality. But homosexuality itself is a reaction to othering failure. It's a biological reaction, it's predisposition, it's predisposed, genetic, hormonal, and so on. It's not the case with narcissism.
Now, I mentioned that the othering of sexual objects, kind of object relations, yeah.
When we other sexual objects, I see a beautiful woman, I say, wow, she's not me. It's very attractive that she's not me. You know, I'll go for it, I'm aroused.
When doing this, I other the sexual object, I perceive the sexual object is not me as other. So the other end of sexual object is modeled on an integrated and differentiated sexual identity as I've explained.
In the absence of such an identity, it is not possible to other sexual objects, as I again explained.
The homosexual merges, fuses, or internalizes and introjects his intimate partner, converts the sexual partner into a kind of internal object, plays with the intimate partner, as if it were some kind of an object inside.
Let me focus on this.
When the formation of a differentiated sexual identity is disrupted, when you're not allowed as a child to choose between homosexuality and heterosexuality.
And for discussion sake, we'll assume that these are the only two options in the pansexual menu.
And they're not, there are others, but okay.
If you're not allowed to choose from that menu, so your sexual identity does not become differentiated. It is disrupted at the phase of differentiation.
The result is autoerotism. You give up on all others, your world becomes devoid of others, and you begin to regard yourself as the only legitimate, attractive, arousing sexual object.
That is known as autoerotism. It leads to an inability to other sex objects, to relate to them as external, separate, an incapacity to actualize intentional, directional, emotions, effects, cognitions, and behaviors.
A disruption in the differentiation phase does not lead to homosexuality, as psychoanalytic literature implies. It leads to permanent, fixated autoerotism without any objects, masturbation, lifelong masturbation, or using objects in a way that deanimates them somehow, renders them non-functional, non-workable.
That is a disruption in the differentiation phase. That's not homosexuality.
Homosexuality is far more advanced than this.
That's why I'm saying homosexuality is not strictly narcissistic libidinal investment. No way.
Homosexuality does involve object choice.
So homosexuality is a disruption in the formation of integrated sexual identity.
The homosexual fails to integrate the rejected part of his pansexuality with a dominant emerging part of his pansexuality. He fails to integrate, in short, his chosen sexual identity, which is homosexuality, sexual orientation, which is homosexuality, he fails to integrate it with the rejected part, which is his heterosexuality.
This failure of integration prevents the homosexual from experiencing a sexual identity which is stable, all pervasive, all determining, functional and operational.
So he needs other people to accomplish this. And he needs them in a frenetic pace. He needs them on a constant basis. He needs, in short, external regulation.
But it's not the regulation of emotions, as is the case with borderline personality disorder. It's not the regulation of a sense of self-worth, which is the case with narcissists. It's a regulation of a sexual identity.
The feeling that you have a clear differentiated integrated sexual identity that you're at peace with, egosyntonic with, and defines you completely.
To achieve this, to accomplish this, the homosexual requires sexual powers.
That's not the case with heterosexual. It is, to some extent, the case with somatic narcissism.
So narcissism and homosexuality have so many superficial similarities that led great thinkers, Freud included, to mistake, to conflate the two mistakenly. They're not the same.
Apropos auto-erotism, when sexual identity is disrupted very early on, you're not homosexual and you're not heterosexual. You're nothing sexually. You're auto-sexual.
This is known as erotic target identity inversion in the literature. You're auto sexual. So in the pansexual menu there's also autosexuality. You become your own lover, so to speak. For good, there are no others, not as a homosexual, not as heterosexual.
That's why I'm saying homosexuality is a much more advanced stage.
Autosexual is autoerotic, but only a minority of autoerotics are also autosexual.
You could be autoerotic and homosexual. You could be auto-erotic and homosexual. You could be auto-erotic and heterosexual.
Auto-erotism is not necessarily pathological if it doesn't take over, if it doesn't become the dominant activity or the dominant type.
If it does, then you are autosexual.
Auto-erotism finds expression not only via sex, but via different activities.
So Freud and others suggested that same-sex partnerships, homosexuality, is a form of auto-erotism because the partners share the same genitalia.
And I think it's a problem with othering.
Because the homosexual cannot other people, cannot regard people as other, he keeps choosing sexual partners which resemble him, himself, which look exactly like himself because he needs to complete himself. He needs to somehow reach a point where his identity is integrated.
So it's more a problem of othering than a problem of auto-erotism or narcissistic investment or whatever.
Incest, for example, in incest, is you're having sex with 50% of yourself. That is auto-erotic, but it's not necessarily also narcissistic.
So we need to be very, very careful.
I think that in the case of incest, narcissism is more dominant, way more dominant than in the case of homosexuality.
Now gender dysphoria, transism, autogynephilia, autopedophilia, and similar parapherias, they're all autoerotic, so autoeroticism is a dominant feature of sexual life, and if it persists into adulthood, sometimes leads to parapherias, to sexual deviances and so.
Now, in everything I've just said, fantasy plays a major role. Remember this, as a general rule.
The classic defense against othering failures is fantasy.
When you fail to other yourself, when your self fails to other, yourself fails to develop, you end up without an ego.
Your internal structures are disrupted and chaotic and disorganized. It's a failure of othering the self. It's a pathology.
When you fail to other people, when you don't regard them as separate or external or not you, it's a pathology. Othering failures are pathologies, severe pathologies, possibly the most severe, I think, psychosis is a major othering failure, the major other, the epitome, in quintessence of othering failure, and othering failure would be psychosis.
So the defense against all these is fantasy. It's an attempt to compensate for these othering deficiencies by othering oneself or by othering internal objects.
When you other yourself, yourself not as a self, not the construct of the self, but you other your existence.
And when you other, definitely when you other your internal objects, when you perceive your internal objects wrongly as external, when you erroneously attribute separateness and externality to objects that are in your head, then you're psychotic, for example, you hear voices, or when you're a narcissist, you perceive your intimate partner as an idealized internal object.
In all these cases, there is an othering of the internal object. When you fail to other external objects, you compensate by othering internal objects, including yourself. The self is an external object, so you other internal.
You cannot other the external. You othering internal objects is a great definition of fantasy.
The failure of normal othering, also known as incorporation, when you incorporate, you fail to other, it leads to a panoply of behaviors.
One of them is homosexuality, and in this sense, in my work, homosexuality is a fantasy defense.
It's a shared fantasy intended to restore othering by using a sex partner as the last remaining internal component for the integration of a sexual identity.
Sexual identity is missing one element, one ingredient, in order to become integrated, and so the homosexual goes on a quest to find that sexual partner who would be internalized and complete the jigsaw puzzle of the sexual identity.
So there is an incorporation here of the sexual object, and in this sense it's a fantasy defense, a shared fantasy, exactly like in narcissism.
In narcissism, narcissism incorporates the external object by converting her into an internal object in his mind, and allowing him to reenact the early childhood conflicts with his mother and to obtain separation and individuation.
In other words, the narcissist uses an intimate partner as the last remaining peace in his own becoming, in his own individuation, the homosexual uses an intimate partner or a sexual partner as the last remaining piece in the sexual identity of the homosexual, which is not yet integrated.
The sexual partner of the homosexual is the glue that should somehow put the pieces together, integrate them, and provide the homosexual with a bulletproof, fully sealed, full-fledged sexual identity.
And this is the addictive nature of homosexual relations in this sense.
Fantasy is especially prevalent in latent homosexuality.
Let's be clear. Latent homosexuality is not only repressed homosexual feelings.
It's a defensive posture. It's submissive. It's regressive.
There are kind of attitudes directed at more powerful males which stand in possibly for the father, I know the latent homosexuality is a bit masochistic, Freud called it the feminine masochism.
Latent homosexuality can however be regarded as a defense against paranoid anxiety, and analogous to the intimidated, appeasing, submissive attitudes adopted by animals when they are attacked by a member of the own species.
So, latent homosexuality is actually much more pathological than overt homosexuality because it involves elements of masochism and sadism.
But I would not go into it in this video. I hope you got the picture.
The differences are subtle but major, very important.
I don't regard homosexuality as a form of narcissism the way the vast majority of literature does.
I regard homosexuality as a failure to perceive other people as separate and external, as distinguishable.
Failure of boundaries, I stop here, you start. Me, not me. A failure of this.
And homosexual, exactly like the narcissist, consumes people, frantically, addictively, consumes them in order to restore something in himself or herself, a sense of coherent, cohesive, stable, integrated sexual identity.
While with the narcissist, the narcissist consumes people also having failed to other than, exactly like the homosexual, the narcissist consumes people to kind of richer situation of individuation, become an individual.
So when you look at it from the outside, when you were just an observer, not aware of these psychodynamics and etiology, they look the same.
The narcissist and homosexual consume people, they are unable to perceive people as others, they internalize people, and that is the kind of stereotypical view.
But the reality is that they do so for different reasons.
And this is why homosexuals are more capable than narcissists of long-term, truly loving and caring relationships.
Because the partner can much more easily complete the homosexual, his partner, sexual identity.
Sexual identity is more easily completed than a sense of self, a missing ego, an individual that has never been born, a black hole. homosexuality is not a pathology in this sense. It's just a form of external regulation. And as distinct from borderline personality disorder, it's not even all pervasive external regulation. It's external regulation that pertains to a single element. All the rest may be totally perfect. In borderline, the regulation is total. Everything has to be regulated. The emotions, the moods, the effects, you name it, cognitions. So borderline is a pathological condition.
In narcissism, the very existence of the narcissists depends on external input. So definitely it's a pathology.
Not so in homosexuality. It's very limited to sexual identity. I think homosexuals are preoccupied with a sexual identity precisely because of this lack, lacuna and deficiency.
Luckily, the homosexuals partner can cater to this psychological need.
And the experience of an integrated sexual identity is acquisitive is acquired
so there's also a lot of healing in long-term homosexual relationships as should be the case in any relationship homosexual or heterosexual we need to heal each other, not as a task or an assignment, but just by being there.