Homosexuality/Neurosis?

• Behavioral Observations of Homosexuality--Question? by Edward K. Brown, Ph.D., 2/17/99
  
  

I think you are right--no one really knows the "causes" of homosexuality. This is understandable, since we also don't really know the "causes" of heterosexuality. We do, however, know the following:
* people experience their sexual orientation in many ways--fearfully, joyfully, neurotically, spiritually, hostilely. This is true for people of ALL orientations.
* psychological "health" is distributed equally among people of all sexual orientations. There is NO data that a given sexual orientation reflects a higher or lower degree of neurosis; in fact, Dr. Evelyn Hooker's research conclusively showed that the MMPI profiles of individuals with varying sexual orientations could not be identified by orientation by psychologists. This finding helped lead to the de-patholigizing of homosexuality in the DSM III.
* sexual orientation is fluid during a person's life. A recent Kinsey Institute study, for example, showed that half of the sample's self-identified "homosexuals" had been sexual with someone of the other gender during the previous 12 months.
I believe that defining "sexual orientation" primarily by the gender of one's partner (in person or fantasy) is simplistic and woefully inadequate, not to mention an arbitrary cultural artifact. We could just as easily define sexual orientation along dimensions of power dynamics, age, relaxation/anxiety, etc.. These dimensions (and others) are as "fundamental" as the homo/hetero/bi dimension, and could easily be as helpful (and, of course, as limited) in understanding human sexual experience.

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