To repeat what was underscored in the previous Substack, the “causes” of homosexuality—and of heterosexuality for that matter—are unknown.
However, not knowing its “cause” has not stopped theorizing about homosexuality over thousands of years. Plato’s Symposium, for example, tells a creation myth that starts with three original sexes: “Male,” “Female,” and “Androgyne,” each split in two as punishment for defying the gods:
“Each [of the original three sexes] when separated, having one side only . . . is always looking for [their] other half. Men who are a section of that double nature which was once called Androgynous are lovers of women . . . the women who are a section of the ‘Woman’ do not care for men but have female attachments . . . they who are a section of the ‘Male,’ follow the male” [Kaplan, 1950, pp. 189-191].
In other words, Plato’s origin myth starts with three proto-sexes that go on to spawn four new kinds of gendered beings (Figure 1):
men who love men (the two halves of the proto-male)
women who love women (the two halves of the proto-female)
men who love women (one half of the Androgyne)
women who love men (the other half of the Androgyne)
Figure 1
The myth exemplifies gender beliefs, cultural ideas about the essential qualities of men and women. In the gender beliefs of the Symposium, women who love women, for example, have a different origin than the women who love men, meaning each has a different “essence.”
In this system, trisexuality and tetrasexuality are the gender beliefs that naturalize another culture’s understanding of sexual behaviors, just as bisexuality has been used—and is still being used by some—to naturalize what is seen in modern times.
Fast forward a couple of millennia to more modern speculations about the “causes” of homosexuality. Starting in the 19th century, such theorizing can be divided into three broad categories: theories of normal variation, pathology and immaturity:
· Theories of normal variation regard homosexuality as a phenomenon that occurs naturally.
§ Although homosexual individuals are born different, that difference is considered natural.
§ In contemporary culture, this theory underlies the belief that people are “born gay.”
· Theories of pathology treat homosexuality as a disease or mental disorder, a condition deviating from “normal,” expected heterosexual development.
§ Atypical gender behaviors or feelings are considered symptoms of the disease.
§ These theories may ascribe an external, pathogenic agent as the “cause” which can act pre- or postnatally: intrauterine hormone exposure, too much mothering, inadequate or hostile fathering, or sexual abuse, to name a few.
· Theories of immaturity regard aspects of homosexuality at a young age as a normal step toward adult heterosexuality.
§ Ideally, homosexuality is a passing phase to be outgrown.
§ When persisting into adulthood, homosexuality is considered a “developmental arrest,” another way of saying stunted growth.
§ Found in psychoanalytic theories of psychosexual development.
Theories of Normal Variation
Theories of normal variation claim gay people are born different, but that their differences are natural. Left-handedness is often used as an analogy in these stories.
Today, left-handedness in a minority of people is not defined as an illness, although being a southpaw may have disadvantages. Historically, however, being left-handed did lead to social opprobrium—the word sinister is derived from a Latin root connoting the left side.
Further, analogous to the experiences of some lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people, left-handed children were often regarded as abnormal and needing to be cured of their “antisocial” habit by forcing them to write right-handed.
It should be further noted that normal variation theories play a significant role in contemporary culture wars. Public opinion polls have shown repeatedly that a belief people are “born gay or lesbian” is associated with greater support for LGB civil rights.
Kinsey
Ulrich’s third sex theory, discussed in Theorizing Homosexuality—Part I, was one example of a normal variation theory which was widely disseminated in the West.
However, the most influential normal variation theorist of modern times is Alfred Kinsey. His now-famous 7-point scale (Figure 2) categorizes variations along a spectrum of sexual possibilities.
Figure 2
At the scale’s left is Kinsey 0, i.e., a man who is exclusively heterosexual and has never had an orgasm from physical contact with another man or been aroused by someone of his own sex. At the other far end is Kinsey 6, the individual whose physical contacts and psychological responses are exclusively homosexual.
Ratings of 1 to 5 represent different degrees of bisexuality with the Kinsey 3 being equally homosexual and heterosexual in both behavior and/or psychological attraction.
Kinsey notably challenged stereotypes of homosexuality in the professional literature of his time:
“The homosexual male is supposed to be less interested in athletics, more often interested in music and the arts, more often engaged in such occupations as bookkeeping, dress design, window display, hairdressing, acting, radio work, nursing, religious service, and social work. The converse to all these is supposed to represent the typical heterosexual male”
[Kinsey et al., 1948, p. 637].
Theories of Pathology
In the Western world, religious beliefs served as regulatory agencies of sexuality and gender. However, by the 19th century, many official powers of the “Religious State” were ceded to what Thomas Szasz called the “Therapeutic State.” As a result, theorizing about what was normal and what was not expanded beyond the province of religion and philosophy into the fields of science and medicine.
The most prominent example of this shift in the 19th century—and as discussed in a previous Substack post—was the work of Richard von Krafft-Ebing. His Psychopathia Sexualis pathologized homosexuality, drawing upon a widely shared medical theory of the time known as degeneracy which claimed homosexuality was a mental disorder.
Again, and as previously noted, Freud rejected Krafft-Ebing’s pathologizing views in the Three Essays. However, later generations of psychoanalysts would in turn reject Freud’s view and pathologized homosexuality. Sandor Rado was a major influence in shaping these later theories.
Rado
In making the neo-Darwinian claim that human psychology is linked to reproductive survival, Rado labeled nonprocreative sexual activities as maladaptive. He theorized homosexual relations and activities were entirely based on a deviation from the “male-female” design. This meant two women (or two men) seeking sexual intimacy with each other were hopelessly engaged in a misguided attempt to mimic heterosexual encounters.
“What evidence enables me to assume that every homosexual act or homogeneous relationship is a statement of the male-female design? If male desires male, why does he seek out a male who pretends to be a female? Why does a male affect femininity if he wants to express a male’s desire for a male? Why does a female turn to a masculine acting female if she is expressing the desire of a female for a female? How else can the crucial fact be explained that in male pairs one male impersonates a female and in female pairs one female impersonates a male? Sometimes evidence for the male-female pattern is deeply repressed, but I think it can be found with a thorough search. They are pretending to be a male-female pair. The male-female sexual pattern is dictated by anatomy”
[Rado, 1969, p. 211-212, emphasis in bold added].
From a contemporary perspective, Rado’s “homosexuals” appear to be narrow constructs of butch and femme stereotypes that make no distinctions between gender roles, gender identity and sexual attraction. He also believed biology, rather than custom, ultimately determined the mimicry of heterosexual gender roles in same-sex couples.
Rado’s theorizing about parental behavior as the “causative,” pathogenic agent in the origin of homosexuality had an enormous influence upon later psychoanalytic narratives of pathology (Bieber, et al., 1962; Socarides, 1968).
Theories of Immaturity
Freud
As noted in my first Substack post, while Freud did not think of homosexuality as an illness, neither did he think it was entirely normal. He called it a “developmental arrest,” by which he meant a kind of stunted growth or psychological immaturity.
In Freud’s developmental model, instincts traversed two immature psychosexual stages, the oral and anal phases, before attaining more “mature” expressions of genital sexuality.
In this model, adults achieving sexual excitement by means other than penile-vaginal sex—fellatio, cunnilingus or anal sex, for example—were said to suffer from either fixations or regressions. Freud hypothesized these latter activities were expressions of immature sexuality, as contrasted with mature forms of genital, (hetero)sexual expression.
It is worth repeating Freud’s late in life thoughts about homosexuality in his 1935 Letter to an American Mother:
“Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.) . . .”
Although homosexuality for Freud was not technically an illness, his theory of immaturity did not quite constitute a clean bill of health. It is further worth noting that in everyday language, calling someone “immature” or “childish” may not be as offensive as calling them “sick,” but none of those labels are particularly respectful.
Sullivan
Harry Stack Sullivan’s psychoanalytic theories are rarely equated with those of Freud. Notably, Sullivan’s Interpersonal theory replaces biological instincts striving for satisfaction as a primary motivating force with needs for interpersonal relatedness (Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983).
Yet, despite their differences, both Sullivan and Freud hypothesized a normal, childhood phase involving homosexual feelings and/or behaviors as a necessary precursor to the development of adult heterosexuality.
Sullivan believed the significant developmental epoch leading to adult homosexuality in men was preadolescence between 8 1/2 and 10 years of age. This is when children begin to express the need for “playmates rather like oneself” (Sullivan, 1953, p. 245). He described this relationship as a chumship and called it a “manifestation of the need for interpersonal intimacy.” Although it did not necessarily involve genital contact, other forms of closeness were possible.
“I want particularly to touch on the intensity of the relationship, because it is easy to think that if the preadolescent chumship is very intense, it may tend to fixate the chums in the preadolescent phase, or it may culminate in some such peculiarity of personality as is ordinarily meant by homosexuality--although, incidentally, it is often difficult to say what is meant by this term. Actual facts that have come to my attention lend no support whatever to either of these surmises. In fact, as a psychiatrist, I would hope that preadolescent relationships were intense enough for each of the two chums literally to get to know practically everything about the other one that could possibly be exposed in an intimate relationship, because that remedies a good deal of the often illusory, usually morbid, feeling of being different, which is such a striking part of rationalizations of insecurity in later life” [p. 356].
Sullivan hypothesized that men who ultimately became “homosexuals” as adults were members of the “out-group, if only with respect to so-called mutual masturbation and other presumably homosexual activity which went on in this group of boys as preadolescent pals” (p. 256). That is, he thought the gay men had been unsuccessful in negotiating “normal” preadolescent same-sex activity that led to adult heterosexuality. His theory of immaturity suggested that homosexuality in adulthood occurred when a boy lagged behind others his own age.
To Be Continued in Part III of Theorizing Homosexuality—Etiological Theories as Morality Tales, which takes up the role of values when theorizing about the “causes” of homosexuality.
References
Bieber, I., Dain, H.J., Dince, P.R., Drellich, M.G., Grand, H.G., Gundlach, R.H., Kremer, M.W., Rifkin, A.H., Wilbur, C.B. & Bieber T.B. (1962). Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study. New York: Basic Books.
Bullough, V. (1979). Homosexuality: A History. New York: Meridian.
Drescher, J. (1998). Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man. New York & London: Routledge.
Drescher, J. (2002). Causes and becauses: On etiological theories of homosexuality. The Annual of Psychoanalysis, 30:57-68.
Drescher, J. (2007). From bisexuality to intersexuality: Rethinking gender categories. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 43(2):204-228.
Drescher, J. (2008). A history of homosexuality and organized psychoanalysis. J. American Academy of Psychoanalysis & Dynamic Psychiatry, 36(3):443-460.
Drescher, J. & Byne, W. (2024). Gay and lesbian identities, and homosexual behavior. In: Kaplan and Sadock’s Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, 11th Edition, eds. R. Boland & M. Verduin. Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer, pp. 2057-2090.
Drescher, J. & D’Ercole, A. (2025). Gender and sexuality in PostBinary times. In: Textbook of Psychoanalysis, 3rd Edition, eds. G. Gabbard, B. Litowitz & P. Williams. Washington DC: American Psychiatric Publishing, pp. 31-47.
Freud, S. (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. Standard Edition, 7:123-246. London: Hogarth Press, 1953.
Freud, S. (1935). Anonymous (Letter to an American mother). In: The Letters of Sigmund Freud, ed. E. Freud, 1960. New York: Basic Books, pp. 423-424.
Greenberg, J. & Mitchell, S.A. (1983). Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kaplan, J. ed. (1950). Dialogues of Plato. New York: Washington Square Press.
Kinsey, A.C., Pomeroy, W.B. & Martin C.E. (1948). Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders.
Kinsey, A., Pomeroy, W., Martin, C. & Gebhard, P. (1953). Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders.
Krafft-Ebing, R. (1886). Psychopathia Sexualis, trans. H. Wedeck. New York: Putnam, 1965.
Rado, S. (1969), Adaptational Psychodynamics: Motivation and Control. New York: Science House.
Socarides, C.W. (1968). The Overt Homosexual. New York: Grune & Stratton.
Sullivan, H.S. (1953). The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry. New York: Norton.
Szasz, T.S. (1974). Ceremonial Chemistry. New York: Anchor Books.
Ulrichs, K. (1864). The Riddle of “Man-Manly” Love, trans. M. Lombardi-Nash. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1994.