Chebakova, Yu. V. Female Identity Within the Framework of Homosexual Behavior

Abstract: Sexual orientation is an important elementof both male and female gender identity. Peculiarities of female development related to the necessity to change the love object defines most of the conflicts on the way to a stable choice of a sexual partner. Psychoanalytical thesis about a mother as a primary source of identification and love creates certain homosexual components in female identity. If these elements are not easily integrated into a sexual self-perception, a woman may have difficulties adapting in different social spheres. Contradictory social stereotypes allow homosexual relations between women, on one hand, but on the other hand they lay convention on traditional families with children and make it difficult for a woman to understand and to accept her homosexual part so a woman often show her homosexual impoulses mostly in extreme life situations. The given article is devoted to some psychoanalytical conceptions about female homosexual behavior and offers a classificaton of female homosexuality from the point of view of different destruction factors and mechanisms during pre-oedipal and oedipal stages of female psychosexual development, their role in homosexual relations and their connection with the level and specific features of personal psychopathology.

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