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Virtually all societies in history have known homosexuality and, with few exceptions, have strongly condemned it—and yet often tolerated it. In 18th century London, for example, Novelist Tobias Smollett sarcastically found that "homosexuality gains ground apace and in all probability will become in a short time a more fashionable device than fornication." But the only society, apart from some primitive ones, that distinctly approved homosexual love was 5th century Greece. "We must blush for Greece," said the enlightened Voltaire. Even this much publicized example has often been overinterpreted. The homosexuality that Socrates and Plato knew rose only with the development of a slave culture and the downgrading of women to the level of uneducated domestics. This resulted in a romantic cult of the beautiful young boy—but not to the exclusion of heterosexual relations —much as the restriction of women to purdah led to a high incidence of pederasty in the Middle East, which is now abating with the growing emancipation of Moslem women.
The once widespread view that homosexuality is caused by heredity, or by some derangement of hormones, has been generally discarded. The consensus is that it is caused psychically, through a disabling fear of the opposite sex. The origins of this fear lie in the homosexual's parents. The mother—either domineering and contemptuous of the father, or feeling rejected by him—makes her son a substitute for her husband, with a close-binding, overprotective relationship. Thus, she unconsciously demasculinizes him. If at the same time the father is weakly submissive to his wife or aloof and unconsciously competitive with his son, he reinforces the process. To attain normal sexual development, according to current psychoanalytic theory, a boy should be able to identify with his father's masculine role.
Fear of the opposite sex is also believed to be the cause of Lesbianism, which is far less visible but, according to many experts, no less widespread than male homosexuality—and far more readily tolerated. Both forms are essentially a case of arrested development, a failure of learning, a refusal to accept the full responsibilities of life. This is nowhere more apparent than in the pathetic pseudo marriages in which many homosexuals act out conventional roles—wearing wedding rings, calling themselves "he" and "she."
Is homosexuality curable? Freud thought not. In the main, he felt that analysis could only bring the deviant patient relief from his neurotic conflicts by giving him "harmony, peace of mind, full efficiency, whether he remains a homosexual or gets changed." Many of Freud's successors are more optimistic. Philadelphia's Dr. Samuel Hadden reported last year that he had achieved twelve conversions out of 32 male homosexuals in group therapy. Paris Psychiatrist Sacha Nacht reports that about a third of his patients turn heterosexual, a third adjust to what they are, and a third get no help at all. But he feels that only about one in ten is moved to seek help in the first place.
The Wolfenden Problem