Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis

Book excerpt: Why has homosexuality always fascinated and vexed psychoanalysis? This groundbreaking collection of original essays reconsiders the troubled relationship between same-sex desire and psychoanalysis, assessing homosexuality's status in psychoanalytic theory and practice, as well as the value of psychoanalytic ideas for queer theory. The contributors, each distinguished clinicians and specialists, reexamine works by Freud, Klein, Reich, Lacan, Laplanche, and their feminist and queer revisionists. Sharing a commitment to conscious and unconscious forms of homosexual desire, they offer new perspectives on pleasure, perversion, fetishism, disgust, psychosis, homophobia, AIDS, otherness, and love. Including two previously untranslated essays by Michel Foucault, Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis will interest cultural theorists, psychoanalysts, and anyone concerned with the fate of sexuality in our time. Contributors: Lauren Berlant Leo Bersani Daniel L. Buccino Arnold I. Davidson Tim Dean Jonathan Dollimore Brad Epps Michel Foucault Lynda Hart Jason B. Jones Christopher Lane H. N. Lukes Catherine Millot Elizabeth A. Povinelli Ellie Ragland Paul Robinson Judith Roof Joanna Ryan Ramón E. Soto-Crespo Suzanne Yang