Sigmund Freud's Views on Homosexuality

Sigmund Freud's views on homosexuality have been described as deterministic, whereas he would ascribe biological and psychological factors in explaining the principle causes ofhomosexuality. He believed that humans are born with unfocused sexual libidinal drives, and therefore argued that homosexuality might be a deviation from this. Nevertheless, he also felt that certain deeply rooted forms of homosexuality were difficult or impossible to change.
Freud's most important articles on homosexuality were written between 1905, when he published Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, and 1922, when he published "Certain Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia, and Homosexuality."[1] Freud believed that all humans were bisexual, by which he primarily meant that everyone incorporates aspects of both sexes, and that everyone is sexually attracted to both sexes. In his view, this was true anatomically and therefore also mentally and psychologically. Heterosexuality and homosexuality both developed from this original bisexual disposition.[2] As one of the causes of homosexuality Freud mentions the distressing heterosexual experience: "Those cases are of particular interest in which the libido changes over to an inverted sexual object after a distressing experience with a normal one."[3]
Freud appears to have been undecided whether or not homosexuality was pathological, expressing different views on this issue at different times and places in his work. Freud frequently called homosexuality an "inversion", something which in his view was distinct from the necessarily pathological perversions, and suggested that several distinct kinds might exist, cautioning that his conclusions about it were based on a small and not necessarily representative sample of patients.[4][5]
Freud derived much of his information on homosexuality from psychiatrists and sexologists such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing andMagnus Hirschfeld, and was also influenced by Eugen Steinach, a Viennese...