Categories as Symptoms: Conceptions of Love in the Psychoanalytic Relationship

An invitation to participate in a conference, especially the phrase, "we hope that your [contribution] might deal with same-sex love," reveals the persistent, lingering effects of the creation of the categories homosexual and heterosexual. Analysis of the phrase suggests a fantasy condensed in the invitation: that a gay psychoanalyst loves and works differently than his heterosexual colleagues and that this difference is determined by his sexual orientation. Approaching the creation of these categories as a symptom of a process of repudiation and projection, the author seeks to begin identifying and sorting through the projected psychic contents that keep these categories' specious effects alive.