Column | Psychoanalysis tormented gay people for a long time

Finland the Psychoanalytic Society (SPY) asked on Friday publicly apologize how psychoanalysis has treated sexual minorities in recent years. The reconciliation process has been prepared in cooperation with representatives of minorities.

The handshake is intended to end a long-lasting schism, which has caused suffering and grief for people belonging to minorities and put an ugly stain on Sigmund Freud’s theory of the human mind.

Psychoanalysis brought to Finland by Erkki Kulovesi, a doctor who studied in Vienna in the 1930s. Fashion science from analysis came into being in the 1950s, when we were looking for keys to the dark side of humanity revealed by wars. Sexual pleasure had a central position in theory.

According to the sexual theory of psychoanalysis, the development of sexuality is caused by events in early childhood. If everything goes well, the person develops into a heterosexual who enjoys genital intercourse, but if the development is disturbed, trauma and problems follow – for example, homosexuality.

The theory explains men’s homosexuality especially with a distant paternal relationship and a close maternal relationship. Freud had reached his conclusions by, among other things, studying history. For example, the artist Leonardo da Vinci had spent a very large sum on his mother’s funeral.

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Freud was a versatile and contradictory intellectual – just like Karl Marx.

Freud was a versatile and contradictory intellectual – just like Karl Marx, who wrote about economics. The work of both can be read in many ways, and the Followers of both began to use the ideas of their mentor for their own purposes. Especially in the United States, Freud’s teachings were twisted in an authoritarian direction.

In Finland, the pathologization of gays was especially visible in the work edited by Kalle Achté Psychiatry– in the work, which for years was the most important textbook in the field, the highest scientific authority. Achté believed that homosexuality is a disease, gays are child seducers and lesbians are women who want their own penis. Homosexuality was removed from the disease classification in 1981, but misinformation influenced attitudes for much longer.

A stigma of illness led to great suffering. If a gay person sought help for mental health problems, which are often caused by discrimination and the concealment of one’s identity, i.e. the so-called minority stress, the therapy might focus on strengthening the relationship with the mother. Tragically, many gays also believed in psychoanalysis, which led to self-loathing and suicide. The worst of the slurs were the integration treatments that tried to “cure” gays into heterosexuals – with understandably poor results.

Many of the effects of psychoanalysis were indirect. As the theory seeped into the media, popular culture, and even school textbooks, it fueled stereotypes and homophobia. Echoes of this were heard in the trial, where MP Päivi Räsänen (right) justified her anti-gay opinions with these doctrines as well.

It is precisely these cockroach-inclined thoughts that are the main reason why SPY ended up with its public apology. The association wants the general public to understand that psychoanalysis has moved forward and that it should not be used to justify prejudice and discrimination. There is no point in apologizing for the theory, because history is full of incorrect theories, but the suffering caused by the theory to people can, and should.

The lesson of the apology is indeed broader than psychoanalysis, because it warns researchers against hubris: science should not be made into a dogma.

Freud psychoanalysts have not had to completely abandon. Now the emphasis is on the radical Freud who broke the taboos of his time, not the authoritarian big man Freud.

For analysts, sexuality is still life’s superpower, but there is no longer talk of normal and abnormal. Homosexuality is not an abnormality, but one manifestation of sexuality, just like heterosexuality.

People should not be classified or mastered, but understood and helped, because we all suffer, but not because we are gay or straight, but because we are human.

The author is the person responsible for the editorial and opinion editorial.