[Between idealization and devaluation--problems and perspectives of theoretical analyses of female homo- and...

Female homosexuality remains a controversial topic. Comparing psychoanalytic and sociological-feminist approaches to the phenomenon, the author points up clear theoretical distinctions between the two perspectives. Feminist authors tend towards an idealization of female homosexuality, while psychoanalysts display an inclination to devalue it as something pathological. However, the latent messages in both discourses have a number of points in common, traceable to a key problem they both have to come to grips with, the "lesbian complex". In lesbian relationships Flaake discerns a "third chance", an area not sanctioned by society, in which it is possible to re-attempt something left unattained in the early mother-daughter relationship: the appropriation of the female body.