PARTISAN REVIEW
tions are needed of a sort which the Report seems not to want to
make. For example: the Report comes out in a bold and simple
way for the naturalness and normality and therefore the desirability
of mouth-genital contacts in heterosexual love-making. This is a form
of sexual expression which is officially taboo enough, yet to say that
its practice indicated a neurosis or psychosis would be impossible
to any psychoanalyst. But a person who disliked or was unable
~o
practice any other form of contact would justify the conclusion that
there was a neurotic streak in his psychic constitution. His social
adjustment, in the rather crude terms which the Report conceives
of it, might not be impaired, but certainly the chances are that his
psychic life would show signs of disturbance, not from the practice
itself but from the psychic needs which make
him
insist on it. It is
not the breaking of the taboo but the emotional circumstance of the
breaking of the taboo that is significant.
The Report handles in the same oversimplified way and with
the same confusing use of absolute concepts the sexual aberrancy
which is, I suppose, the most complex and the most important
in
our cultural life, homosexuality. It rejects the view that homosexu–
ality is innate and that "no modification of it may be expected."
But then it goes on also to reject the view that homosexuality pro–
vides evidence of a "psychopathic personality." "Psychopathic per–
sonality" is a very strong term which perhaps few analysts would
wish to use in this connection. Perhaps even the term "neurotic"
would be extreme in a discussion which takes "social adjustment," as
indicated by status, to be the limit of its analysis of character. But
this does not leave the discussion where the Report seems to want
to leave it-at the idea that homosexuality is to be accepted as a
form of sexuality like another and that it is as "natural" as hetero–
sexuality, a judgment to which the Report is led in part because of
the surprisingly large incidence of homosexuality it fmds in the
population. Nor does the practice of "an increasing proportion of the
most skilled psychiatrists who make no attempt to re-direct behavior,
but who devote their attention to helping an individual accept him–
self" imply what the Report seems to want it to, that these psy–
chiatrists have thereby judged homosexuality to be an unexceptionable
form of sexuality; it is rather that, in many cases, they are able to
effect no change in the psychic disposition and therefore do the sen-
474
