A Letter From Freud to the Mother of a homosexual (1935):

Dear Mrs. [Erased]

I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact, that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you why you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.) It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime and cruelty too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.

By asking me if I can help, you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way, we cannot promise to achieve this. In a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies, which are present in every homosexual; in the majority of cases it is no more possible. It is a question of the quality and the age of the individual. The result of treatment cannot be predicted.

What analysis can do for your son runs in a different line. If he is unhappy, neurotic, torn by conflicts, inhibited in his social life, analysis may bring him harmony, peace of mind, full efficiency, whether he remains a homosexual or gets changed. If you make up your mind he should have analysis with me—I don’t expect you will—, he has to come over to Vienna. I have no intention of leaving here. However, don’t neglect to give me your answer.

Sincerely yours with best wishes,
Freud

The Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud

James Strachey
Translator

Mark Solms psychoanalyst neuropsych
Translator

Sigmund Freud
Original Author

The Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud

James Strachey
Translator

Mark Solms psychoanalyst neuropsych
Translator

Sigmund Freud
Original Author

#bookrecs

Hello people of impeccable taste today I made a comic👀


It was for the manga competition and got there 30 minutes late so😅
I could have used the extra 30 minute for rendering but still.... 👀

my mom after whipping my ass for touching the hot plate as a child

"[W]e have three axes whose specificity and whose interconnections have to be analyzed: the axis of knowledge, the axis of power, the axis of ethics. In other words, the historical ontology of ourselves must answer an open series of questions; it must make an indefinite number of inquiries which may be multiplied and specified as much as we like, but which will all address the questions systematized as follows: How are we constituted as subjects of our own knowledge? How are we constituted as subjects who exercise or submit to power relations? How are we constituted as moral subjects of our own actions?"

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('What is Enlightenment?' in Essential Works Vol 3, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, Michel Foucault 1978/1984: 318)