Studies on Homophobia: From Individual Psychology to Group Phenomenon

Abstract

A consideration of homophobia could encompass both an investigation into the individual psychology and group factors which play a role in the constitution of homophobia. Yet the link between individual-psychological explanations of homophobia and explanations that posit homophobia as a group phenomenon has received scant attention. The combination of these two tasks constitutes the general aim of the larger project. The larger project seeks to question the extent to which particular concepts such as repression, repudiation, negation, castration, splitting of the ego and phobia, in Freudian psychoanalytic theory, can contribute to understanding homophobia as individual-psychological and social phenomenon. This raises a further theoretical problem. Is it theoretically tenable to extrapolate from explanations of individual psychology to explanations of social psychology? Freud would argue against such an extrapolation. However, the impossibility, on the grounds of Freudian psychoanalytic theory, of extrapolating from individual psychology to social psychology, would not rule out drawing a link between individual-psychological and social homophobia. In other words, the link between individual-psychological and social homophobia will have to be explored and established on different grounds. The first portion of the dissertation considers the theoretical problems with social-psychological accounts of homophobia and the issues with a particular individual-psychological account of the condition through the lens of Freudian psychoanalytic theory. The second portion looks to an understanding of both individual-psychological and social homophobia and then illustrates the link between the two. Through careful conceptual work I argue, as the thesis of this dissertation, that an analogy between fetishism and homophobia exposes the latter condition as both an individual-psychological and social phenomenon. By drawing this kind of analogy, the link between individual-psychological and social homophobia becomes more apparent within the scope of Freudian psychoanalytic theory.