Termination Was Not the End

We describe the treatment, five decades ago, of a 28-year-old gay man, who, at the end of psychotherapy, had become became able for the first time to experience an intimate sexually satisfying relationship with a woman. Both he and the therapist were pleased with the outcome. The therapist imagined that heterosexuality would be stable and associated with a sense of contentment. Three years following termination the therapist was shocked to learn that her ex-patient had been murdered, possibly by a man he met in a gay bar. This article discusses the therapist's feelings about changes in psychoanalytic models of homosexuality and psychotherapeutic practices from the time she was a resident until the present.