Female Homosexuality: Choice Without Volition (Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series) [Hardcover]

Elaine V. Siegel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1988 | ISBN-10: 0881630675 | ISBN-13: 978-0881630671 | Edition: 1

Describing in detail her analytic treatment of eight female homosexuals with common symptoms of incomplete body image and unconscious denial of differences between the sexes, Siegel details the recurring treatment phases that typified their analyses and offers formulations based on both ego-developmental and object-relational perspectives. She candidly describes the countertransferential issues that entered into the treatment of these women and examines basic societal assumptions about sexuality that are imprinted on the analyst.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"While the psychoanalytic literature on male homosexuality has been rather extensive, that on female homosexuality has been sparse.  This volume contains the most comprehensive clinical investigation of this subject and the largest sample of female homosexuals treated by a single psychoanalyst.  This is a thoughful, comprehensive contribution to the subject of female homosexuality.  The author's highly original formulations, practical applications, and case studies are of considerable interest and value.  This is a book that will not gather dust on the shelf."

- Theo L. Dorpat, M.D., Contemporary Psychiatry

"The material is well organized and instructive, with many references.  The case studies, in particular, present an illuminating picture of the analytic process and the author's point of view.  This scholarly book is a welcome and timely addition to the limited clinical literature on female homosexuality."

- Frida G. Surawicz, M.D., Journal of Clinical Psychiatry

"On the basis of extensive psychoanalytic experience, as well as an extensive review of psychoanalytic theory, the author provides an ego-development/object-relations view of female homosexuality.  Included are eight detailed case studies and a chapter on parental profiles, as well as a chapter on countertransference.  This careful study is bound to become a key reference in the area."

- Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic

Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (March 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0881630675
• ISBN-13: 978-0881630671
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #233,113 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique and groundbreaking, February 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Female Homosexuality: Choice Without Volition (Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series) (Hardcover)

Although steeped in psychoanalytic jargon, and obviously intended for the professional, this book is remarkable for its groundbreaking, revolutionary view of the dynamics of bi/lesbianism, and tells a fascinating story.

This book reports in graphic, sexually explicit language the case histories of 6 adamantly committed lesbians referred to Dr. Siegel by their lesbian support group who became fully and permanently heterosexual upon treatment!

This clinical result is even more impressive when you realize that Dr. Siegel treated a total of only 12 lesbian referrals from that same lesbian support group--so that fully one-half of the test group became fully and completely heterosexual, at which point the lesbian support group angrily stopped making referrals to Dr. Siegel!

The key to successful treatment, as outlined exhaustively by Dr. Siegel, is that these 6 women were ultimately able to identify with her as a strong heterosexual mother, something that all had lacked as children. In doing so, they were able to successfully complete their psychosexual development with her and become fully and exclusively heterosexual.

Since her own successful countertransference with all 6 patients was itself the essential element, in effect this discovery and clinical observation could only have been made by a female psychoanalyst, such as Dr. Siegel, which in itself makes it a truly remarkable story!

Dr. Siegel further outlines her view that today's sex industry is also uniquely a bi/lesbian phenomena. Her sociological research conclusively demonstrates for the first time that female sex workers are in fact predominantly bisexual and lesbian.

She details many other aspects of each patient's histories, including each parent's role and other novel, determining psychoanalytic factors that she believes contributed both to their original lesbianism and to her own successful treatment.

Again, the only weakness of the book is that Dr. Siegel must translate each observation into tedious and laborious psychoanalytics, which detracts somewhat from the book's fascinating and unique content and popular appeal.

The book is groundbreaking in that Dr. Siegel's successful treatment is unique, unsurpassed, and, in my opinion, itself a phenomena worthy of study.

7 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Waste of Time, June 14, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Female Homosexuality: Choice Without Volition (Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series) (Hardcover)

Elaine Siegel has written a book in which she openly presents her negative countertransference toward her lesbian patients as a clinical modality to change their sexual identities. What is most amazing about this book is that the author is so open about her contempt for her lesbian patients.

3 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The politics of defiant dominance, September 23, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Female Homosexuality: Choice Without Volition (Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series) (Hardcover)

The intractable controversy of nature vs nurture continues as modern science tries to understand whether homosexuals are born or made, and what evolutionary adaptation is served by homosexuality. In the final chapter of this book, ("Parental Profiles"), Elaine Siegel spells out the subtle dynamics of reverse dominance hierarchy, as expressed in the pre-oedipal familial forces which worked together to create 6 female homosexuals: The pre-oedipal(maternal)forces which she describes in these families operated in all 6 families to undermine and reverse the pathological and emotionally non-nurturing Oedipal(paternal)dominance.

From an evolutionary viewpoint, such powerful pre-oedipal forces defy Oedipal male dominance in favor of the weaker, smaller and subordinate mothers and other females. In point of fact, this clear-cut pattern of offspring siding with the mother and other female family members against the father consistently emerges in the case histories of all the sexual perversions: For example, homosexuality, by retaining the primary feminine identification with the mother, effects reverse dominance either through maternal alliance(in the case of sons), or through sexual alliances with an alpha female(as in out-migrating bonobo females). Sado-masochism has its roots in powerless deception in anticipation of punishment, while fetishism, transvestitism, voyeurism and exhibitionism employ deception and stealth to defuse the threat of castration by dominant males. Such employments of deception pose ongoing "security risks" and thus effectively monopolize the attention of alpha and other dominant males, so that mothers and aunts successfully gain an advantage, and can artfully achieve reverse dominance through the employment of such strategies.

Female out-migration is an incest avoidance mechanism that evolved to prevent mating with unidentifiable fathers in humans, bonobos and chimpanzees. However, when out-migration is not possible and generational captive incest does occur, mothers defensively create and employ pre-oedipal alliances with offspring in an attempt to drive out the offending, dominant males. Generational captive incest is thus the explicit evolutionary precursor of pre-oedipal reverse dominance hierarchies.

Theoretically, the precarious balance of female versus male power(and pre-oedipal sexuality), in both human and primate societies, is ultimately driven environmentally by levels of prenatal maternal stress, and developmentally by the effect of distant or absent fathers. Maternal stress, in turn, is modulated by its own hierarchies of genes, hormones, and environmentally-driven sex-typed behaviors.