Summary
An examination of the concept of latent homosexuality reveals it to have played a vital role in the theory of personality development. However, it is a concept that becomes meaningless outside of the libido theory, since it connotes dormancy rather than potentiality. As a dormancy concept, it requires us to accept the bisexual theory of sexual development as the explanation for the development of homosexuality. A concept involving dormancy is valid in scientific work if there is ample, validated evidence of the pre-existing state which can arise, fully developed under certain stimuli. The necessary and sufficient data for this concept have never been presented, and alternative explanations prove to be more adequate and capable of validation.
Since homosexuality is a potentiality in all human beings under certain developmental conditions, so a special concept is required, except the notion of a dynamic theory of personality development. Consequently, we need either to revise our notions about latent homosexuality or else define it more precisely in order to make it a useful, meaningful concept in personality theory.
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Additional information
Leon Salzman, M.D., Diplomate, American Board of Neurology and Psychiatry; Fellow, American Psychiatric Association; Member, American Psychoanalytic Association; Treasurer, Academy of Psychoanalysis; Associate Professor, Clinical Psychiatry, Georgetown University Medical School; Faculty, Washington School of Psychiatry; Visiting Lecturer, Catholic University Graduate School; Consultant, St. Elizabeths Hospital, Glendale Sanitorium. This paper was read at the 112th Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Chicago, May 1956.
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Salzman, L. The concept of latent homosexuality. Am J Psychoanal 17, 161–169 (1957). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01875313
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01875313