Homosexuality As Othering Failure

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, or else 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 women, 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.

Homosexualism is homosexuality in females.

So when I say homosexuality, when I use the word homosexuality in this video, I'm referring to 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 homoromanticism. Homoromanticism 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 homoromanticism. 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. 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 another case may be autism has nothing to do with bedparenting, 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 Isai, 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. Homosexuality 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 side 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. Forget all these nonsense. This is 100 years old. These are 100-year-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.

The few studies that have kind of peered into this topic, the few studies that try to ascertain the existence or non-existence of contagion found that there's no such thing.

Now, finally, mental illness.

Homosexuality is not a mental illness. It used to be used to define as a mental illness in the early editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, removed in 1973 and 4 from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, never to make an appearance again. Homosexuality is not mental illness.

Homosexualism spectrum disorder is not a mental illness. These are biological causes or biological antecedents 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 overhyping psychoanalysis, psychodynamic theories and object relations theories, which are, according to self-styled armchair experts, passé. There's no such thing as passé in psychology.

Some things are valid, some things are not valid, regardless of when they've been described. Sadism 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 the internal family system, 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, not 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, sociology, and its development. And I'm 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 your 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 three or four, we become predominantly heterosexual or predominantly homosexual.

And the other propensity, the other half, the other potential, the other possibility is repressed, becomes latent.

So when you 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, with cathected 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 repressed their positive heterosexual feelings, that is, Freud's prejudice in 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.

I propose my previous much contested video.

Okay, just kidding.

Next.

In my new work, I am putting an emphasis on the concept of othering, a concept which was central to Lacan's work.

Here 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. 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, affects. 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 emit, when you're in the presence of someone else, this triggers you. It triggers you to actualize some of your potentials, 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 other's 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.

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, antisocial, 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 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 a disorder.

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 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 on 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 relations 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 develop sexual identity A. If you're exposed to another setup, another combination, another dynamic between people, you're 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 others, 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 obviouslythe presence of other people has a massive impact on the latency of homosexuality or 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 outsidersoutside, by other people.

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 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. You're a work in progress.

Okay.

So other people in your life, starting with your mother and father and many others, they determine not who you're going to become sexually. They do not determine whether you'll become homosexual. That is determined by your biology. That is, by the way, proven 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 or emotionality or hyper or hippo or 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're expressed by being exposed to the environment.

This is a science of epigenetics.

Okay.

What happens when there is a disruption or 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?

They are forms of narcissistic othering failures.

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 never emerges from narcissistic object choice in the sexual sense to other object choice, to object libido.

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, is 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.

I go into that in my shared fantasy videos.

Have a look at the shared fantasy playlist.

So at that point, a child who experiences othering failures, child who's 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. He 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, sexual identity formation failure. These are forms of narcissistic othering failures.

And in this case, it is not integrated or differentiated sexual identity.

This is a point where I strongly differ from classic psychoanalytic theories.

For example, 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's 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 dependent, the independent of its object."

Sorry, allow me to repeat.

Freud 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 his self. He doesn't understand or realize that the self that is emerging is himself.

So even when the child is sexually cathartic, 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 narcissistically bidial investment. It's a failure to other, 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 eight billion clones of me or four billion clones of me."

So from that moment on, the homosexual relation, homosexuality, the investment, the cathegories, 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 that's not the core problem because all humanity, all human beings go through a narcissistically bidinal investment phase.

Not everyone is homosexual. In homosexuality, there's, you know, sexuality is not only a problem of narcissistically bidinal 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 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 to what the subject is, once was, or hopes sometime 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 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 narcissistically libidinal investment.

No, it's not the same.

In narcissistically libidinal cathexis or narcissistically libidinal investment, the child is erotically and sexually attracted to his self, to himself.

He doesn't make a distinction. He says, I am my sexual object.

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 narcissistically 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. It's not that the homosexual perceives the object as himself, but he cannot perceive 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 infusion, automatic, instant sexual merger infusion.

Like heterosexuality, homosexuality is an aclitic. 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.

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 an aclitic.

Sexuality is an aclitic. 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 other, however not external and not separate. There is a dependence on the object for providing what the subject cannot provide.

In the case of heterosexuality, 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. You cannot be other. Someone else needs to be other to you.

In the case of homosexuality, the external object isnot 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.

The 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 gender a sexual identity, a full-fledged, fully working, and a 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 would say simply that in homosexuality, the sexual identity is dormant, latent, which would explain 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, or California, there's no longer oppression of homosexuals, mostly.

So it's not a reaction to social oppression. I think it's much more deep.

I think homosexuals need other homosexuals to reawaken their sexual identity, activate it and act on it.

They consume each other in sexual encounters just to maintain a continuance of sexual identity, whereas heterosexuals don't need this.

Now, is this pathological?

No.

I'm describing this as a failure in the process of othering, because 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 massism, you are critically dependent on other people in order to be you.

Similarly, when othering fails, for example, in homosexuality, you're critically dependent on other people to be you sexually, your sexual identity. And yet you're 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're going to 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 homosexuality, homosexuals know that they're homosexuals.

That's differentiation for you.

I think this is 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're 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 or four years, the system initially is sponge sexual.

Then differentiation sets in and breaks the system.

Now you're heterosexual.

But no one can survive with a broken system, psychologically.

So we have to reintegrate the parts.

We have to create a hierarchy or 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 part?

So then we need to build the hyper structure.

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 abundant 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 money and to individuate, if you were not allowed to be in touch with reality, mother was overprotective, father was overprotective, then you as a child don't acquire the skills to regard 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's sexuality 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, is a biological reaction. It's predisposition, it's predisposed, it's genetic, hormonal and so on. It's not the case with narcissism.

Now, I mentioned that the othering of sexual objects, the kind of object relations, 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'd go for it. I'm aroused.

When doing this, I other the sexual object. I perceive the sexual object as not me, as other.

So the othering 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've again explained.

The homosexual merges, fuses or internalizes and interjects 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.

So when the formation of differentiated sexual identity is disrupted, there is one set of consequences and when the formation of an integrated sexual identity is disrupted, the result is another.

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's sake, we'll assume that these are the only two options in the pansexual menu and they're not the 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, in capacity, and in capacity to actualize intentional directional emotions, effects, cognitions and behaviors.

The 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, not statistically, bidenal 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 the dominant emerging part of his pansexuality.

If I were to integrate in short his chosen sexual identity, which is homosexuality, sexual orientation, which is homosexuality, if I were to integrate it with the rejected part of, which is his heterosexuality, it's this failure of integration that 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 are at peace with, you're egosyntonic with, and defines you completely.

To achieve this, to accomplish this, the homosexual requires sexual partners.

That's not the case with heterosexual. It is, to some extent, the case with somaticnarcissism.

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 identity, 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 auto-sexuality. You become your own lover 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.

Auto-sexuals are auto-erotic, but only a minority of auto-erotics are also auto-sexual.

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're auto-sexual.

Auto-erotism finds expression not only via sex, but via different activities.

So Freud and others suggested that same-sex sex and 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, is the sex 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, transvestism, autogenephilia, autopedophilia, and similar paraphilias, they're all auto-erotic.

So auto-erotism is a dominant feature of sexual life.

And if it persists into adulthood, sometimes leads to paraphilias, to sexual deviances and so on.

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 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 and the 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 other the internal.

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, the narcissist 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 piece 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.

Homosexuality is especially prevalent in latent homosexuality.

To be clear, latent homosexuality is not only repressed homosexual feelings, it's a defensive posture. It's submissive. It's regressive.

There is a kind of attitudes directed at more powerful males, which stand in possibly for the father.

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 their own species.

So latent homosexuality is actually much more pathological than overt homosexuality, because it involves elements of masochism and sadism.

But I will 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 the 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 reach a situation of individuation, become an individual.

So when you look at it from the outside, when you were just an observer, not aware of the psychodynamics and etiologies, they look the same.

The narcissist and homosexual consume people. They are unable to perceive people as others. They are very bad and 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, sexual, his partner's 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.

Personality 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 affix, you name it, the clinicians. Subordinal line is a pathological condition.

In narcissism, the very existence of the narcissist 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 their sexual identity precisely because of this lack, lacuna and deficiency.

The homosexual's 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.