The Homosexualities: Reality, Fantasy, and the Arts

Rating:
Summary: THE PRE-OEDIPAL ORIGINS OF VISUAL SEXUALITY
Review: Socarides' thesis here is simply that intensely erotic, visual attraction in the perversions(i.e, in homosexuality, voyeurism, sadism, masochism, exhibitionism, transvestitism, transexualism, etc) is always reparative of a pre-oedipal(maternal) separation/individuation crisis, and creatively substitutive for a pathologically rejecting or intrusive mother.

Adaptive visual sexuality theoretically originated and coincided with continuous, yearlong estrus displays in adult human females, and simultaneously in the bonobo ancestral line. In humans, our language capacity enhanced and favored a more verbal socialization, and successfully identified paternity, whereas our nearest primate relatives, the bonobos, retained a highly visual socialization based on a primary maternal separation/individuation process, and intensely centered on visual displays and reaction to the highly visible female estrus.(Frans de Waal, in his book Bonobo: the Forgotten Ape details the prototypical bonobo pre-oedipal separation/individuation crisis in pre-pubertal and adolescent bonobo females on pages 116-117 of his book, which I recommend as a companion book for discussion of the primate origins of adaptive, highly visual sexuality).

Socarides' theory explains, in a rich, deep, and satisfying way, why male reparative homosexuals, for example, may continue to lack visual erotic attraction to females even after they spontaneously achieve full heterosexuality in therapy, since the perversion itself, namely homosexuality, originally served a self-reparative function, in a pre-oedipal splitting of the maternal imagos into a pathological(rejecting or intrusive) pre-visual, sensual mother on the one hand, versus an intensely visual, eroticized, idealized maternal substitute(the perversion)on the other. The perversion is always a regression to the pre-oedipal point of earliest separation/individuation crisis and fixation, and it creatively attempts to serve a reaffirming function, namely, self-cohesion and preservation of self-identity, in the face of the young child's overwhelmed attempt to self-repair and restore the original maternal union.

Socarides' theory further explains 1. the exclusively visual sex of pornography and the sex industry, which reveals an unconsciously retained and problematic pre-oedipal primary feminine identification in both males and females and 2.the now omnipresent visual separation "traumata" displayed by some youth, in extreme piercings, tatoos, and other visual body modifications, that also signal a pre-oedipal separation/individuation crisis.