TikTok Post 56-B

           As noted earlier, Michael Foucault clarified how homosexuality came to be regarded in terms of individuals’ soul or psyche instead of their unusual sexual behavior. This new focus aided the efforts of gay liberationists, for it is indeed reasonable and just that homosexuals warrant the same legal privileges and protections afforded all citizens. But this care and focus on psyche need not preclude recognition of behaviors that are harmful to individuals and others. If homosexuality is comprised of behavior and being, both tied to inversion of the sexual instinct, both sexuality and the sense of self need to be understood.

         It is possible that what Dennis Altman heralded as progress could have instead been detrimental to needful men. Psychiatrist, Charles Socarides, thought so. He warned: “Homosexuals were formerly buried by being considered untreatable pariahs; now they are in danger of burial again by being called normal.” Failing to recognize the possible harm of same-sex behavior for its role in the evolution of sexual inversion would likely preclude men’s obtaining what they desire and need. If homosexuality is an adjustment disorder, the outgrowth of children’s naïve response to trauma, then its normalization would ensure that these legitimately needful men would not receive the affirming relational nourishment and growth to maturity that is their birthright.