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Parental Background of Homosexual and Heterosexual Women

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Marvin Siegelman
Marvin Siegelman*
Affiliation:
School of Education, The City College of New York, New York City, 10031, U.S.A
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Extract

The major emphasis in psychoanalytic literature has been on the aetiology of male, rather than female, homosexuality (Socarides, 1968; Wiedeman, 1962). Those psychoanalytic writers who deal with the parent-child relations of homosexual women present a wide diversity of contrasting descriptions and explanations (Bacon, 1967; Bene, 1965; Fromm and Elonen, 1951; Socarides, 1963). One systematic research approach that has evolved from the psychoanalytic literature involves the evaluation of the ‘triangular system’ hypothesis (Bieber et al., 1962). This hypothesis was formulated as an explanation for male homosexuality, and most of the studies to date that relate to it report on male samples (Siegelman, 1972b). The family pattern of the ‘triangular system’ depicted for male homosexuals is a close-binding, intimate, controlling mother and a detached, hostile, rejecting father (Bieber et al., 1962). Kaya et al., (1967), using questions and methods quite similar to Bieber et al., found that homosexual, compared to heterosexual, women patients had fathers who were close-binding and intimate—the converse of the parent behaviour noted for male homosexuals. Kaya et al., however, found that the mothers of the lesbians did not differ in behaviour from the mothers of the non-lesbians. In a study of 25 adolescent lesbian patients, Kremer and Rifkin (1969) found that the fathers of the homosexual women were hostile, exploitative, detached, and absent, but they were not close-binding. The mothers in the Kremer and Rifkin study were described as overburdened and inadequate in handling their responsibilities. Using 27 items from the Bieber et al. (1962) study, Thompson (1971) discovered that the mothers of non-clinical homosexual women were close-binding and intimate, while their fathers were hostile and detached. Many of the Bieber et al. (1962) questions were also used by Gundlach and Riess (1968), who reported that the parents of non-clinical lesbians were not different from the parents of non-lesbians.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 124 , Issue 578 , January 1974 , pp. 14 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1974 

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