Despite Freud’s tolerance of homosexuality during his lifetime in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, evidenced for example, by his widely quoted “Letter to an American Mother” and a 1930 interview published in the German newspaper, Die Zeit, subsequent psychoanalysts (e.g., Irving Biebring and Charles Socarides) were quite conservative in their conceptual understanding of homosexuality and psychosexual development, and shaped the thinking and practice of the American psychoanalytic community. 

According to Richard Isay, a gay American psychoanalyst who has studied gay men and their development, “homosexuality was seen ipso facto as a perverse and deviant form of sexuality because gay men do not reach the theoretical normal developmental end point of resolving the Oedipal conflict by desiring someone like their  mothers through an identification with their fathers.” (ibid, p.14). Elsewhere he observes that these analysts viewed homosexuals as “latent heterosexuals who are deviant or perverted in their sexuality because of emotional trauma (1989/2009, p.10).” 

It is not known how many analysts still hold this outdated view.

Socarides was a co-founder of a research institute advocating turning homosexuals into heterosexuals, leading to so-called “conversion therapy” aimed at extinguishing homosexual desire. 

Although an article published in 1998 in the New York Times suggested that internalized homophobia among psychoanalysts was already a thing of the past, in his book, reprinted in 2009, Isay points out that:

“Traditional psychoanalytic theory still asserts that unimpeded normal development leads to the mature expression of heterosexuality. Homosexuality, the theory holds, is caused by severe early developmental   disturbances. These early disruptions are said to produce the conflict that results both in a turning away from heterosexuality and in the severe personality disorders that all homosexuals are believed to suffer.” (ibid, p.4)

Isay himself views homosexuality as primarily genetically-based, although he concedes some influence to the social environment and family. Based on his extensive clinical work with gay men, he does not view homosexuality as a developmental arrest. Instead, he has proposed “a framework for an understanding of the normal    development of gay men.” (ibid). 

Generally speaking, over the past fifty years, the mental health community of psychologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts had made some notable headway. For example, in 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of 

mental disorders. Two years later, the American Psychological Association adopted a resolution that being gay was no longer to be stigmatized and pathologized. In large measure, this change in attitude was due to political lobbying and pressure by the LGBT community.

Despite these advances, “psychoanalysts persisted well into the 1980's in describing homosexuality as a "perversion," and analysts continued to speak of their ability to "cure" the "serious character disorders" of their gay patients.” (Goode, 1998). It is only since 1992 that psychoanalytic institutes began accepting gay and lesbian candidates for training to become psychoanalysts them-selves. Until then, it was seen as a major impediment and grounds for rejection of an application. 

In accordance with the changing social and political climate, as well as advances in what is known about human sexuality, a num-ber of analysts are attempting to develp new theories that account for   homosexuality as an expression of normal development.

Compared with traditional psychoanalysis, other schools of thought have been more far more accepting and favorable in their views.

Despite accumulating evidence for a biological/genetic explanation regarding homesexuality, including studies of how hormones influ-ence the fetus in the womb, it has been argued that the jury is not in, that there is still not enough evidence for a definitive causal    hypothesis. 

What has been made abundantly clear is that there is no justifica-tion whatsoever for attempting to change a person’s sexual orien-tation, whether by persuasion or so-called “conversion therapy.” (APA, 2009). These attempts are not only cruel and unwarranted, but doomed to fail, as research has shown (Shidlo & Schroeder, 2002; Shidlo & Gonsiorek, 2016). Many countries and U.S. states have banned conversion therapies with minors