Same sex attraction. Should it be stopped? - Page 18

Freud believed that homosexuality could be the natural outcome of normal development in some people. He noted that homosexuality could occur in individuals who had no other signs of deviation and no impairment in their functioning. However, he did not view homosexuality, or inversion as he called it, as a sign of illness, by which he meant a symptom arising from psychic conflict. Instead, he saw homosexuality as the unconflicted expression of an innate instinct.

Freud believed in a constitutional bisexuality; that in every individual there was a certain component of masculine (active) as well as feminine (passive) tendencies. Although bisexual tendencies were universal, Freud believed some people were constitutionally endowed with more of one tendency than the other. He believed life experiences, particularly traumatic ones (environmental factors), could have an impact on the development and expression of one's innate instincts (biological factors). Under normal and non-traumatic circumstances, the component instincts that determine the sex of one's final object choice should be consistent with one's anatomical sex. That is to say an anatomic male should ideally express the masculine component instinct and obtain sexual satisfaction from women. However, Freud also believed that even adult heterosexuals retain the homosexual component, albeit in sublimated form.

Freud saw adult homosexuality as a developmental arrest of childhood instincts which prevent the development of a more mature heterosexuality, referred to as Freud's Theory of Immaturity."