Object choice and actual bisexuality

Abstract

Actual bisexuality is to be distinguished from homosexuality in a latent state and from conscious bisexual fantasies. Contemporary social changes have caused an increased demand for help for those men and women capable of engaging in protracted heterosexual and homosexual relations. Among such people narcissistic and borderline states are common. Clinical material is presented in some detail. The author suggests that the condition is associated with a tendency to be caught up between the anaclitic and narcissistic types of object choice. The concurrent involvement with a male and female love object against a background of pseudogenitality creates the illusory appearance of two objects being involved, covering up the fact that there is splitting of the original love object together with severe preoedipal disturbance.