INSULT ADDED TO INJURY

by Peter Jackson

This book is both educational and interesting, if only for discovering some of the diverse views apparently held by Dr. 9ergler. A brief commentary can hardly constitute an analytical review. Dr. Berglor's thesis, at least inferentially, seams to imply that homosexuality is indeed a disease and that treatment will invariably be successful if there is a sincere desire for a cure. I do not believe that experience bears this out. The law describes the practising homosexual as a felon. Should Dr. Bergler's assumptions become universal all practising homosexuals would also be classified as wilfully diseased. This adds insult to injury. The categorles of serious mental illness may be filled by heterosexuals as well as homosexials. The fɔregoing is my primary criticim of Dr. Bergler's work.

I am reminded that psychoanalysis too often conceals the nature of social relations behind teras for sexual relations. It is alsɔ probably true that psychoanalysis, unless properly discounted, can lead us astray even further by concealing the nature of exclusive social relations behind inclusive teras for sexual relations.

There is much evidence to support the fact that one may be made neurotic by the social discriminations of the hierarchy of class. Certainly the homosexual element of the U.S. population confronts & prejudice virtually amounting to "hierarchic psychosis." This probably prevails in all nations, but is especially sinister in those which are largely ruled by the dead hand of institutions developed from past situations but unsuited to the present. If, as Dr. Bergler seems to suggest, homosexuality is a "social disease," no doubt "psychogenic illness" is the usual symptom. Perhaps it is no accident, that psychoanalysis and the Fræidian school grew under the shadow of the ailing Hapsburg bureaucracy. In considering the factor of the emotional probless of the homosexual it may be that abandonsent to forms of sexual expression that society deans degrading could be at once a rebellion and a self-accusation, a morbidly tense acceptance of the very judgments by which one refuses to be bound. Could it be that one comes closer to the truth in saying that such abandonnent is a grotesque form of social courtship than if one confines his explanation to a purely sexual source? Heterosexuals also indulge in degrading acts. The foregoing is not to discount the many possible benefits of psychoanalysis. In one case known to me a young man was continually beseeching the Godhead, through the intercession of St. Jude, for assistance in accomplishing a homosexual fornication with his eoployer. Admittedly this man could well use advice, not only fros his analyst, but also from his confessor. On the other hand, if homosexuals may actually love we are reminded that "dans le veritable asour c'est l'âme qui enveloppe le corps"--in true love it is the soul that embraces the body.

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