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OBJECT CHOICE IN A
CASE OF MALE HOMOSEXUALITY
BY AUSTIN SILBER, M.D. (NEW YORK)
In Certain Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia, and
Homosexuality, Freud described a mechanism leading to homo-
sexual object choice (2). He wrote, 'Observation has directed my
attention to several cases in which during early childhood feel-
ings of jealousy derived from the mother-complex and of very
great intensity arose against rivals, usually older brothers. This
jealousy led to an exceedingly hostile aggressive attitude against
brothers (or sisters) which might culminate in actual death
wishes, but which could not survive further development. Un-
der the influences of training-and certainly not uninfluenced
also by their own constant powerlessness-these feelings yielded
to repression and to a transformation, so that the rivals of the
earlier period became the first homosexual love-objects....
'This new mechanism in the homosexual object choice, its
origin in rivalry which has been overcome and in aggressive im-
pulses which have become repressed, is often combined with the
typical conditions known to us. In the history of homosexuals
one often hears that the change in them took place after the
mother had praised another boy and set him up as a model. The
tendency to a narcissistic object choice was thus stimulated, and
after a short phase of keen jealousy the rival became a love-
object. Otherwise, however, the new mechanism is a separate
one, in that the change takes place at a much earlier period, and
the identification with the mother recedes into the background.'
In the case reported here, the chain of events described by
Freud led not merely to homosexual attitudes, but even to overt
homosexuality. Furthermore, the death wishes did not remain
unfulfilled,-the brother actually died, and the patient's homo-
sexuality appeared after his death.
A thirty-two-year-old married man, father of two young chil-
497
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AUSTIN SILBER
dren, came to analysis after several months with another psy-
chotherapist. He had initially sought psychotherapy for acute
anxiety followed by depression after the appearance of a rash
in the inguinal region, which a dermatologist had told him was
due to 'nerves'. Fearful of injury to his genitals, he had sought
psychiatric treatment. He had engaged in repetitive homosexual
acts which he found almost impossible to control. In subway
toilet rooms he sought homosexuals to perform fellatio upon
him. If fellatio was not feasible, he would engage in mutual
masturbation or in masturbation alone. He would also visit
bars in attempts to find a homosexual partner, who must be a
'clean-cut' young man, usually in his early twenties.
The patient's wife told his therapist that she feared that her
husband's anxiety and depression were due to his guilt over
extramarital contacts with women, and reported that her sexual
life with her husband was very satisfactory to her. In their inter-
course, which took place three or four times a week, her hus-
band's potency was satisfactory. Later in psychotherapy, after
psychoanalysis had been suggested to him by his therapist, the
patient told his wife of his homosexual activities. She expressed
disbelief, but agreed that analysis seemed to be indicated.
The patient came to analysis hesitantly and only as a conces-
sion to his wife's concern; he felt satisfied by his relation with
her and by his homosexual activities. He derived more pleasure
from heterosexual intercourse, but had an urgent need to en-
gage in homosexuality. The analysis lasted for a little more than
three months, when analyst and patient agreed to end it.
The patient had no sisters, but his redheaded brother, three
years older, had been tall, handsome, clever, friendly, and well-
liked, the shining light of the family. The father preferred him
and the patient was often compared to his brother to his own
disadvantage. 'Mother always paid complete attention to him. I
felt alone, ugly, unwanted. I could not do anything right and
he could not do anything wrong, but don't get me wrong, I
never hated him.' The brother was referred to by the patient as
his ideal. As a child he spent hours at the window sill, staring
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OBJECT CHOICE IN MALE HOMOSEXUALITY 499
into the street while his brother was outside playing with his
numerous friends. The patient remembered being seduced at
the age of five by 'an older boy, the same age as my brother'.
The nature of the seduction was unclear; it had something to
do with 'sucking'.
The patient was a short, dark, brooding man, neatly dressed
and groomed, rather coarse and crude in his speech and man-
ners. He spoke in a primitive, ungrammatical way that belied
the fact that he was a college graduate with a fairly responsible
job in a retail business. He spoke mostly in monosyllables
and discussed his sexual exploits in the argot of the streets. This
superficial manner would at times recede; a terribly frightened,
lonely, perplexed childlike man would momentarily emerge,
only to disappear again in impulse-ridden behavior.
At twelve the patient developed asthma which was moderately
severe but became intractable at times during the first five years
of his marriage. At twenty-one he married the first girl he had
known well. At the time of his analysis they had been married
for eleven years. He noticed that his asthma was less severe at
the time of his homosexual escapades. He had not been troubled
by asthma for six years, but early in analysis expressed the dread
that, 'As soon as I stop being sucked, I'll start to wheeze again'.
During one session the patient spied a little bug on the wall,
jumped up, crushed the bug with the palm of his hand, and
spoke with obvious relish of his intense dislike of insects. As a
child he remembered being fearful of them. This incident was
followed by associations that quickly led to thoughts of his
brother.
When the patient was eighteen, while his brother was serving
in the Air Force, the family received a wire informing them of
the brother's death in a plane crash. Upon being told the news,
the patient experienced deja vu as it is described by Freud (3).
It is probable that the brother's death touched upon an un-
conscious wish. During adolescence the patient had rarely in-
dulged in homosexual play, chiefly mutual masturbation, but
after his brother's death his homosexual activity began in
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50 0 AUSTIN SILBER
earnest. After he was married, three years after the brother's
death, it subsided to some extent.
The patient recalled a dream which had recurred on many
occasions after his brother's death. 'See ball come toward me-
I'm running, it is catching up and getting larger-it's red in
color.' The only association to the dream was 'my brother's hair
is red'. A fantasy on the couch expressed a similar wish: 'leaning
back in chair as though floating in space'. Space was described
as brilliant red with a white haziness. This association was fol-
lowed by the thought that his brother's hair was red. In both the
dream and fantasy, the wish to see the brother and to be close to
him seems manifest. It is to be close to brother's hair and basi-
cally his penis that is important. On a deeper level penis prob-
ably is equivalent to breast.
In his escapades in subway toilet rooms he always had the
vague idea that he was looking for a particular person-he could
not say who. He would look casually at his partner's face and
avidly and excitedly at his own and his partner's penises. After
each homosexual contact he felt incompletely satisfied and
vaguely anxious, and was likely to seek another such meeting in
another subway station. The patient expressed the idea that,
'someday I'll meet my brother in the hereafter; I know he is
there waiting for me'. Their mother, who had experienced a
psychotic depression after the brother's death, still refused to
believe that her son was dead.
The following dream seemed to make clear the meaning of
his visits to subway toilet rooms: 'I'm riding on a train; it stops
at various stations. I get off and look around. I realize that the
train is going somewhere, someone has died. I think it is father
who has died, then I'm not sure, and feel maybe it is my brother
who died.' To 'looking around' in the subway stations in the
dream, the patient associated some of the urgency of his need to
stop and look into the toilet rooms. Searching there seemed to
represent the search for his brother. The desire to see and show
his erect red penis was a way of denying the brother's death. He
identified himself with his sexual partner and played the role of
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OBJECT CHOICE IN MALE HOMOSEXUALITY 501
his brother. In seeking younger men, he became the older
brother who aggressively seduced them. Thus he converted pas-
sive wishes into active ones. This need to keep his brother fig-
uratively alive caused him to suffer anxiety when his penis
detumesced and to seek out another partner.
The lack of satiation during these experiences with men can
be connected with the dream. In the dream, it is either father or
brother who has died, it is they who are impotent. The patient
has to demonstrate that he is always sexually alive, that he can
always be erect. In this way he copes with some of his intense
castration anxiety reflected in the fear of injury to the genitals
that led him to seek treatment. For the patient to experience
an erection meant to deny the possibility of castration-he
could experience three or four orgasms within a half hour. To
be completely satisfied, however, meant to have a flaccid penis
and thus to accept the possibility of castration. This caused
diminution of his sense of omnipotence and was a narcissistic
injury. For these reasons a feeling of satiation was not experi-
enced by the patient in his homosexual contacts.
Freud in describing this type of homosexuality added, 'In the
cases I observed, it led only to homosexual attitudes, which did
not exclude heterosexuality and did not involve a horror of
women'. Our patient enjoyed both overt homosexuality and
heterosexual gratification with his wife. The formula 'I do not
hate my brother, I love him', was carried out with the outburst
of homosexual activity which persisted for the three years after
his brother's death. The mother dealt with the death by a pro-
found regression and psychosis, whereas the patient sought out
narcissistic objects, repressed the aggression, and in a sense de-
nied the loss of the brother. As Bak (I) has noted, 'Partial nar-
cissistic object relationships in the perverse symptoms seem to
represent different forms of defense against the unneutralized
aggression threatening the object'. Some of the repressed aggres-
sion may have been bound by an identification with the mother.
Lorand (4) has emphasized this mechanism in homosexuals and
Bak points out that 'the "intense attachment" to the mother,
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50 2 AUSTIN SILBER
which led to identification with her, contains an intermediate
phase of aggression motivated by disappointment'. Part of the
patient's desire to be sucked represents playing the role of
mother (penis equals breast) as well as acting like the child
being fed. He identifies himself with his psychotic mother who
refuses to accept the brother's death and feeds these men who
represent his brother; in this way he keeps his brother alive. All
this is a deeper meaning of his desire to see and show his erect
red penis as well as a way of denying his brother's death. The
repetitive dream after his brother's death, 'See ball come toward
me-I'm running, it is catching up and getting larger-it's red in
color', represents the wish to see his brother's penis as well as the
deeper meaning involving mother's breast.
His heterosexual activity with his wife is perhaps best ex-
plained by his shifting from seeking his brother as a narcissistic
object to identification with his brother. The patient had fre-
quently expressed the conviction that his brother was somehow
alive and certainly would be met in the hereafter. This belief is
represented by the brother's being alive within himself, and
may have been manifested by the patient's viewing his own
erect penis as evidence of his brother's alive state. This identifi-
cation with his brother makes more possible a heterosexual
object choice. It is at this point that his wife becomes available
as the love object. His wife is viewed by him as a rather thin-
veiled mother whom he both loves and fears. She is permissible
for him because he is really his brother at this point, by virtue of
the shifting from the narcissistic object relationship with him to
the phase of identification. It is as if the patient says, 'It is
brother who can do no wrong, who has these feelings, and not
1'. Therefore the patient does not have to respond with fear at
the possibility of viewing the forbidden female genital-for by
identifying himself with the brother, he is really the potent and
acceptable brother who also in effect represents father. The out-
break of the inguinal rash apparently interfered with his feel-
ings of omnipotence and his ability to identify himself with his
brother. The possibility of his own castration became more
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terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
OBJECT CHOICE IN MALE HOMOSEXUALITY 503
real, and he had to reassure himself by seeking out men, by
maintaining frequent erections, and by reinstituting his brother
as his narcissistic object choice.
The treatment was discontinued as the patient became more
and more aware of the seriousness and depth of his illness and
reacted by denial and a mild feeling of well-being.
SUMMARY
This short case presentation illustrates Freud's observation that
the jealousy experienced by the younger brother, accompanied
by exceedingly hostile aggressive attitudes, yields to repression,
and is so transformed in some cases that the rival of the earlier
period becomes the love object of the later stage. The existence
of the death wish toward the brother appears to be substantiated
by the patient's feeling of deja vu when he heard of his brother's
death. The compulsive seeking out of the homosexual object is
an attempt to undo this wish, and instead to find the brother
alive, as represented by the erect penis. The object of hate then
becomes in this narcissistic way the object of love.
REFERENCES
1. !UK, ROBERT C.: Aggression and Perversion. In: Perversions, Psychodynamics,
and Therapy. Edited by Sandor Lorand. New York: Random House, 1956.
PP·23 1-24°·
2. FREUD: Certain Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia, and Homosexuality
(1922). ColI. Papers, II, pp. 232-243.
3. : Fausse Reconnaissance (Deja Raconte) in Psychoanalytic Treatment
(1913). Standard Edition XIII, pp. 201-207.
4. LORAND, SANDOR: The Therapy of Perversions. Op, cit., pp. 290-307.
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