A transitory homosexual passion in the course of an analytic treatment

Do homosexualities express a sexual conflict originating in bisexuality or must we look for their deep determinism in the narcissistic conflict and its vicissitudes? Two clinical sequences from the treatment of a borderline patient, which occurred during years seven and eight of treatment, a period characterised by intense drive turbulence and the unexpected occurrence of a transitory homosexual passion, will enable the reader to follow the psychical movements and evolution of the work of representation. The first sequence throws light on the links between her sudden involvement in this homosexual passion and the traumatic dangers of a breakdown of her ego's capacity for representation, linked to a reactivation in the transference of early and later traumatic traces whose reverberation in the transfero/countertransference dynamic was the source of a painful transference that was responsible for this lateral transference movement. The second sequence shows the links between the strengthening of her capacity for representation, thanks to the working through of the oedipal conflict in its two aspects, and her renunciation of this passion. The roots of this transitory homosexual passion in the deep flaws of her psychical functioning raise metapsychological questions concerning, in particular the dynamic of the 'double' ('twin') and narcissism.