situations in which he can get pleasure in displeasure.

But while this is the neurotic's real aim, another nart of his unconscious is forbidding this infantile indulgence. So the neurotic creates various defense mechanisms or alibis which will permit him to enjoy the forbidden fruit of masochistic enjoyment and at the same time give him the illusion that he is not doing so. One of these alibi defences is homosexuality.

Why do some masochists adopt the homosexual defense instead of others? Presumably because their mothers have disappointed them more and frightened them more. "The homosexual," says Dr. Bergler, "takes flight to man as an antidote for the woman he fears; the antidote is only secondarily elevated to the status of an attraction".

All this is decided in the first 18 months of life. Most psychoanalytic theories about homosexuality put the determinative period later: in the years from 2 to 5 when the child is going through the Oedipus Complex. By putting the causative factors back in the pro-Oedipal period, Dr. Bergler absolves the father of all responsibility for his son's homosexuality; the father's strength or weakness, his presence or absence, can play no part in the period when the child is aware only of his mother. Oddly enough, Dr. Bergler also absolves the mother of any responsibility; both parents are "immocent victim" if their sons become homosexuals.

What then determines why one boy should get an overdose of masochism and another should develop normally? Or why one baby should be so afraid of his mother that he becomes homosexual and another should adopt some other neurotic defense? Are there inherited or constitutional differences? Nor does he Some physical factor? Chemistry? Dr. Bergler does not say.

tell us why, in a two-sided relationship, only the child should be blamed for failure. If the future homosexual's infantile fear, centered on his mother, was greater than the fear other babies had, could it not be that the mother of the future homosexual was somehow different in her behavior toward her son? And if, as Dr. Bergler believes, homosexuality has increased, is it more reasonable to suppose that a generation of mothers is behaving differently--in such a way as to produce homosexual sons--than that infants are suddenly being born less able to cope with the unavoidable strains of infancy?

A fair evaluation of Dr. Bergler's belief in the masochistic foundation of homosexuality is not easy to make. No doubt homosexuals living in a heterosexual and indeed anti-sexual society frequently find themselves (Dr. Bergler would say "put themselves") in situations in which they stand a chance to be hurt. Dr. Bergler contends that even if all the external disadvantages, discriminations and dangers of being homosexual were miracalously removed, homosexuals would still be miserable (he would say "seek misery"). This he cannot know. For neither Dr. Bergler nor any of his colleagues has ever treated the product of a sexually free society in which no penalties and no risks were attached to homosexuality.

Elsewhere Dr. Bergler has written, "homosexuality is not a drive but a defense mechanism" (in NEUROTIC COUNTERFIT-SEX, Grune & Stratton, New York, 1951, page 199). The assumption that homosexuality is not a true sex drive at all but a form of "counterfit -sex" underlies the theory of the masochistic source of homosexuality. The homosexual is obviously seeking something: If it isn't sex, it is very likely masochistic "kicks." If the opposite assumption is made, that an independent homosexual drive can exist apart from masochistic or other neurotic trends, then Dr. Bergler's theoretical structure crashes like a house of cards.

The rejection of homosexuality as an independent drive in human beings is of course directly contrary to Proud who assumed the basic bisexuality of all men. To Dr. Pargler bisexuality "has no existence beyond the word itself. For example, men in prison do not seek homosexual outlets as a natural alternative when women are not available--but because they are

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