Psychology and the LGBTI+ Issue in Uruguay: The Uruguayan Psychoanalysis Journal’s Discourse as a Case Study

Abstract

The chapter studies the production of discursive that Uruguayan psychoanalysis has developed on the LGBTI+ issue, from 69 articles published in the Uruguayan Journal of Psychoanalysis, official academic publication of the Uruguayan Psychoanalytic Association. Taking as a guide some inputs from the Foucauldian analysis, the emergence of discourses on the LGBTIQ+ issue in APU, the frequency and periods of enunciation of the LGBTIQ+ issue in the corpus analyzed, the subjects of reference on which it is spoken, the associated practical domains and the theoretical specification grids with which such discourses are constructed. The Uruguayan psychoanalysis, like all psychoanalysis around the world, had strong hetero-cis-allo-normative components, which they begin to question recently, during the first twenty years of the current century. The questioning of such biases is the subject of debate and dispute within the national psychoanalytic institution, although without major results at the level of a strong paradigmatic transformation that eliminates pathologizing and iatrogenic elements of psychoanalytic theory and practice with LGBTI+ clients.

7.1 Introduction

Uruguay has historically been seen as a progressive country in terms of civil, political, and social rights since the beginning of the twentieth century. This is how the English historian Eric Hobsbawm remembers when describing the “collapse of the values and institutions of liberal civilization” (Hobsbawm, 2018, p. 116) at the beginning of the last century, and he points out that only a very small list of solidly constitutional states existed in occident: “Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, the United States and the now forgotten Switzerland of South America and its only real democracy: Uruguay”.(Hobsbawm, 2018, p. 118).

However, as in any other case, the deep analysis of any social reality returns complex and often conflicting panoramas in which multiple perspectives confront each other, sometimes without the possibility of synthesis.

About the relationship between psychoanalysis and what — to paraphrase the argentine sociologist Ernesto Meccia (2006) — I will call like LGBTI+ issue,¹ much ink has been flowing for a long time. However, for the Uruguayan case, the systematic review of the literature, as a procedure to understand the discursive production of this current of psychology, has not been approached with rigor or published, beyond the fact that the oral account and the evidence repeatedly report the existence of deep reactionary conceptions and iatrogenic practices developed under the protection of Freudian doctrine.

For that, I selected an especific documentary repository, the Revista Uruguaya de Psicoanálisis² (hereinafter RUP, by its acronym in Spanish), published by the Asociación Psicoanalítica del Uruguay³ (hereinafter APU, by its acronym in Spanish), in this chapter I will try to analyze the discussions, protagonists, conflicts, transformations, and continuities the national psychoanalysis—and with it, a piece of the national psychology—has gone through in the first two decades of this century.

7.2 Background

Psychology in Uruguay emerged, as a discipline of reference, at the beginning of the twentieth century, along with profound political reforms, mainly in the construction and modernization of The Uruguayan state, known as Batllista progressivism, linked with educational interventions (Chávez, 2016; Chávez & Freitas, 2014). This is why some specialists in the history of psychology in Uruguay relate the emergence of psychological practices in the country with processes of disciplining bodies and souls. Within these disciplining processes, the control of sexuality and the installation of a new sexual morality are one of the distinguishing elements of Batllista progressivism .

As Uruguayan historian Diego Sempol describes:

In the “nine hundred” local medicine labeled same-sex attraction as an “invertido”,⁴ differentiated between tops and bottoms, and particularly pathologized the latter.

For medical knowledge, as Barrán (2002, pp. 181-182) points out, the origin of the “invertido” lay in biological problems (“physical monstrosities”) or in the influence of the environment (“education” and “bad company”). This vision was widely extended in the Río de la Plata area, from the European academic sources of those years. (2013, p. 23)

In this context, this author highlights that “A key part in the normalization of this mechanism of domination was played by medical and psychoanalytic discourses, which in Uruguay during almost the entire twentieth century, censored and pathologized homoerotic sexualities and dissident generic identities” (Sempol, 2013, p. 23).

Regarding psychoanalysis, the author points out that “he accepted the construction of homosexuality as a disease, but instead of appealing to the category of ‘invertido’ he almost always preferred that of ‘perverse,’ emphasizing problematic processes of identification and the arrest or deviation in the psycho-affective growth of individuals” (Sempol, 2013, p. 24), even when homosexuality was decriminalized in Uruguay in 1934.

In contrast to the poor progress of the national LGBTIQ+ issue throughout the twentieth century, the twenty-first century will be characterized by constant mobilization and generation of social, political, legal, and public policy development agendas toward this population and their living conditions, progressively recruiting different sectors of the population under this cause, which is part of the so-called new rights agenda.

This “new agenda” allowed the enactment of laws such as the reform of the regulations on the commission and incitement of hate crimes (2003), concubine union (2007), homoparental adoption (2009), law of change of name and registered sex (2009), equal marriage (2013), and recently the Integral Law of Trans Persons (2018). Those advances in normativity changed many of the ideological and relational bases of the old previous social contract of the Uruguayan society.

7.3 Contemporary Psychology in Uruguay: Notes to Understand the Institutional Context of the Discourses

What I can call “national psychology” is a very complex network of institutions of different sizes, with views and interests not always shared collectively and inherited of different views and paradigmatic approaches on the place of psychology in the social world.

Actually, there are two universities with training in psychology—the University of the Republic (UDELAR) and the Catholic University of Uruguay—and one institute (different recognition in undergraduate national education standards), the Francisco de Asis University Institute.

At another level, outside the university structure, national psychology is organized around other types of actors. On the one hand, there are scientific societies, such as the Uruguayan Psychology Society, the Uruguayan Society for Analysis and Behavior Modification, the Uruguayan Society of Analytical Psychology, the Uruguayan Society of Medical Psychology and Psychosocial Medicine, the Uruguayan Sports Psychology Society, and the Association of Psychopathology and Psychiatry of Children and Adolescents, among others. On the other hand, and as a result of the last civil-military dictatorship (1973–1985), when the institutional processes of conformation of the discipline were roughed up as subversive (Baroni, 2006), there is a very wide network of institutions and small private training groups that address different topics of professional practice, mainly focused on permanent training activities for graduate students, mainly at the level of clinical practice.

In this context I will focus on APU (founded in 1956), because it’s the second oldest scientific society in Uruguay (after the Uruguayan Psychology Society).

7.4 The Uruguayan Journal of Psychoanalysis (RUP) as a Case Study

An analysis of LGBTIQ issue discursive productions of APU in RUP is relevant, first because APU is one of the oldest national psychological institutions with an important relevance in the Uruguayan academics, with an extensive impact in the society, for example, the continuous edition of the RUP, published since 1956, APU foundation year.

Second, Uruguayan psychology has and still has a strong psychoanalytic influence that permeates the theoretical background of almost all the fields of psychologist professional work.

As an example, the analysis of the current curriculum of the bachelor of psychology of the Faculty of Psychology of the University of the Republic shows that 35% of the courses have contents associated with psychoanalysis, and 27% of these courses have exclusively psychoanalysis as a theoretical background.

In addition to the historical weight of APU in Uruguay, APU is the only psychoanalytic institution in the country that officially integrates the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA).This allows the institution to function as what Foucault (2017) called delimitation instance, an institutional instance that through different procedures of power (such as the power of tradition) marks hierarchies and borders with respect to the contours of an object that delimit an interior and an exterior of it. In this case, what psychoanalysis is and what is not.

To understand the weight of the APU’s power in terms of psychoanalytic tradition, the IPA recognizes only three training models that the different national associations can apply: the Eitingon model, the French model, and the Uruguayan model (International Psychoanalytical Association, s/f).

Finally, the discussion on the relationship between psychoanalysis (as a subdisciplinary field and theoretical background of psychology in all its diversity) and the LGBTIQ+ issue is presented as an active and current problem, as evidenced in the conference of the contemporary philosopher Paul B. Preciado made at the École de la Cause Freudienne (Preciado, 2020).

7.5 Sampling

A corpus of analysis included all the articles of the RUP published between 1999 and 2020. This corpus integrates the issues ranging from number 89 to number 127 inclusive. A search for the keywords, i.e., homosexuality, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, transvestite, intersexual, hermaphrodite, queer, and diversity, was conducted on the digital editions of RUP. As a result, 69 articles were analyzed.

7.6 Results

Foucauldian orientations for discourse analysis (Foucault, 2017) involve the analysis of elements that allow the emergence of a discursive formation and its social function in a given historical and cultural context, which are grouped in four general dimensions:

• The (social) emergence of the discursive object

• The subjects of enunciation

• The associated domains

• The materializations of the utterances

Each of these dimensions involves the analysis of specific vectors of discourse organization. For this study five elements will be addressed:

• I. Emergence of discourses on the LGBTIQ+ issue in APU

• II. Frequency and periods of enunciation of the LGBTIQ+ issue in the corpus analyzed

• III. Subjects of reference

• IV. Associated domains

• V. Specification grids

7.7 I. Emergence of Discourses on the LGBTIQ+ Issue in APU

The relationship of the APU with what I called in lato sensu the LGBTIQ+ issue goes far beyond the social and historical emergence of the LGBTIQ+ issue stricto sensu in Uruguay.⁵ In fact, it is a foundational relationship.

In this sense, two articles in the RUP, written by Alba Busto de Rossi (1999, 2008), reported an experience of group psychoanalytical psychotherapy developed by Juan Carlos Rey and Juan Pereira Anavitarte in 1956. There’s no report of the objectives, evaluation, and procedures of the intervention.

Beyond this anecdotal detail, the first appearance of an LGBTIQ + issue, in the RUP and in the selected period, belongs to Nadal Vallespir (1999), who reflects on the difficulties of clinical neutrality in psychoanalytic care; for example in front of the homosexuality of a patient. Thus the author states that “The neutrality of the psychoanalyst, perfect, absolute neutrality, without hesitation, is not possible. It is a legitimate but unrealizable aspiration” (Vallespir, 1999, p. w/p). Exposing that “Our resistance prevents us from listening to the unconscious of the patient by preventing us from hearing the same unconscious in ourselves” (Vallespir, 1999, p. w/p), exemplifying “what happened to J. McDougall, who he could not see his homosexual patient desire by virtue of his difficulty in recognizing his own” (Vallespir, 1999, p. w/p).

This problem, associated with the axiological differences between psychoanalyst and client, will be explained in more detail by Dr. Marcelo Viñar (2000), based on what he will call “civilizational mutation.” Expression through which social changes will be presented, among which are the historical and social transformations of sexualities at the end of the 20th century, and particularly the advances in rights of “homosexuals”; and that for the author it requires paradigmatic and theoretical transformations oriented to “what to do” with homosexuality and homosexuals in psychoanalysis, facing a new social context.

7.8 II. Frequency and Periods

From the analysis of the variations in the frequency of publication of articles with the qualitative identification of themes and perspectives of analysis linked to the treatment of the LGBTIQ+ issue strictu sensu, I identified three different paradigmatic periods (see Fig. 7.1):

Fig. 7.1

LGBTIQ+ issue lato sensu, 20 years evolution in the RUP

• 1. A first period, developed between 1999 and 2009, I called “traditional normative period,” is characterized by the use of homosexuality and bisexuality as adjectives of pathology psychic process described by Freud. Terms and concepts such as constitutive bisexuality, homosexual identification, and invasive homosexual transference appeared frequently.

As an example, the article by Stella Yardino (2002), entitled “The Mecedapa Forest: About the (Re)actualization of Early Injuries” describes the psychic impact that different early losses produce on the subjects and the difficulties of repairing the injuries, mainly with the arrival of adolescence.

Evolutionary stage that would be more difficult for this type of patient to pass, although:

… even the most normal adolescent crisis imposes a series of losses and grief in the transition to maturity: mourning for the child’s body, for the bisexuality that must be renounced, loss of the child’s place and its privileges and mourning for the parents childhood that serve the adolescent as a refuge and protection against the unknown. (s/p)

Renounces that for psychoanalysis it does not imply either solely or mainly “the assumption” of a specific sexual orientation but can be extended to meanings such as the loss of omnipotence and the non-consideration of the limits of infantile thought. This understanding of the adolescence (by theory conceptualizations) implies the negation of the possibility of lesbian or gay childhoods (Kort, 2008), where such sexual orientations are manifested early and exclusively from the first moments of childhood and reinforce a political economy of the sexes, genders, orientations, and sexual practices, typical of psychoanalysis, according to which everything that does not compose the hetero-cis-allosexual norm can be used as impunity as a synonym for immaturity, primitivism, stagnation, or lack of principle of reality.

• 2. A second period located between 2010 and 2015, I called the emergency of the LGBTIQ + strictu sensu issue in psychoanalysis, explicitly inaugurated by the article “Human Rights and Psychoanalysis” by Marcelo Viñar (2008)—several times president of the association—linked to the relationship that psychoanalysis has with social reality and its changes, declares that:

The place of women, their emancipation, which some authors consider as the most relevant societal fact of the 20th century, the notion of family, sex, filiation, paternal and maternal role, does not have the same validity and value today as they had in the historical conditions of production of classical theory. How are courtship and sexual initiation rites conceived today? Or our position in relation to homosexuality, divorce, adultery?  If in Freudianism bisexuality and the difference between the sexes is the fundamental difference, how do we adapt our ideas or not? We can keep talking about maternal and paternal role in the traditional and contemporary family? What historical variation can we see in these concepts? These are issues that also concern the hinge between society, human rights and Psychoanalysis. (p. 54)

These questions are the basis for which the author affirms:

“include human rights as a topic to think about from psychoanalysis implies resign or affirm some certainties of the theoretical edifice of our discipline” (Viñar, 2008, p. 53), making a deep institutional appeal to assume this task.

Undoubtedly, I understand that this position, coming from a figure of institutional authority in the APU, will give rise to a real discursive explosion in the pages of the RUP. An example of this are two specific issues of the RUP: (a) issue 111, entitled “ Challenges of contemporary psychoanalysis”, edited in 2010 and (b) issue 113, edited in 2013, entitled “Perversion revisited”. In them, almost all of the articles published refer, directly or indirectly, to topics on sexual diversity. However, it is necessary to emphasize that said discursive explosion does not necessarily refer to an inclusive perspective on LGBT rights, such as that proposed by Viñar”.

In this sense, it is important that between 2009 and 2013 two important legal transformations were processed: the modification of the adoption law and equal marriage, processes that involved great debates in multiple sectors of society. Surely the same thing happened in his own way in the field of psychoanalysis.

During this period, references to the LGBTI+ issue (although mainly reduced to the consideration of homosexualities) are deployed in association with other topics, basically three: (1) the relationship between psychoanalysis, society and historical transformations, clearly illustrated by Viñar’s statements; (2) the problem of the ahistoricity of Freudian discoveries and the relationship between analytic neutrality, the values and ideology of analysts, and the values and ideology of psychoanalytic theories; and (3) the problem of theoretical transformation of psychoanalysis, i.e., the problem of eliminating traditional concepts of Freudian theory and the problems derived from eventually replacing them or not by others without seriously affecting the hermeneutic and practical capacity of psychoanalysis.

The problems associated with ahistoricity of Freudian discoveries and the relationship between analytic neutrality are summarized in some issues that Javier García (2007) asks himself when he writes:

… the oedipal structure is outside or inside? the difference of sexes is outside or inside? Can we think today that the oedipal structure and the destiny of identifications and sexual object choices has a psychic determinism, linked to the psychic determinism, linked to proto-fantasies, independently of socio-cultural changes? (p. 193)

The third type of productions can be referred to several works, many of which have as their main problem the gap that remains between the action of divesting oneself of the old pathologizing categories of different aspects of the human (among which sex and gender issues stand out) and the emergence of new categories and perspectives with which to listen, understand, and operate psychoanalytically.

A clear example of this is the concerns reported in 2016 by the group “Forum” by APU: “Does the term perversion still serve us as a concept to think with or does it become an obstacle by the very force of the concept?” (de Mello et al., 2016, p. 137).

Adding further:

What effects does the reception in the consultation room of children who arrive with a (psychiatric) diagnosis of gender identity disorder (for example) have on us? Do I still think that the object is contingent? Is an adequacy of a supposed convenience of object choice imposed? What effects does the psychiatric discourse of the present have on the thought and language of analysts? What effects do the conceptual modifications that come hand in hand with social conquests have on us? For example: How does the depathologization of the concept of homosexuality affect us? Why, apparently, is it not possible to deep the discussion of this topic? (de Mello et al., 2016, p. 138).

Questions that are asked three years after the approval of equal marriage in the country, five years after the approval of the legal name change for the trans population, and three years after the category of “Gender identity disorder” was suppressed of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. And mainly, to more than twenty-five years after the elimination of homosexuality, from the ICD by the World Health Organization, and more than 30 years after in the DSM, by the American Psychiatric Association.

• 3. Once the equal marriage and the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy were sanctioned in the country, between 2012 and 2013, both the Uruguayan LGBTIQ+ movement and feminist movements began to dispute what would only be achieved in 2018 with the enactment of the Comprehensive Law for Trans People: a package of legislative resources with a strong administrative impact in the live conditions of trans people in the country.

This movement had several important milestones:

First, the inclusion of trans people in an economic transfer program that until now had as beneficiaries households with dependent children.

Second, the eradication of “Gender Identity Disorder” category from the 2013 of the DSM V, in 2013, promoting the international campaign Stop Trans Pathologization.

Third, the creation of specific health services for trans people for medical and psychological care, which functioned mainly within the University of the Republic.

Due to the strongly endogenous characteristics of the APU, the epistemic debates developed within the framework of such programs remained outside the access of the institution.

Thus then, the path that the UDEALR School of Psychology develops from friendly attention to the registration of some of its services within the framework of affirmative psychology is an element that the psychoanalytic association does not incorporate into its debates.

It is even possible to think that the prominence that university psychology will have in this period displaces that the APU has had over the years, at least in this thematic field and professional performance and with it the social relevance of these speech.

Finally, and in relation to the prominence and independence that the psychology developed by the UDELAR as of 2013, the participation of openly gay, lesbian, and trans psychologists in this study could also be pointed out more and more frequently. The type of services leaves them in a complex position regarding being able to speak at the same time from the psychology and from the LGBTI + community, given their heteronormative and cissexist policies.

7.9 III. Subjects of Reference

Although the search was carried out taking into account a variety of terms and identity categories, I must report that almost all of the articles only refers to homosexuality and homosexuals, particularly gay men.

Regarding the rest of the categories that compose the LGBTI+ front, lesbian issues appear linked to Freud’s clinical cases, mainly to the history of The Young Homosexual Girl and to Dora’s lesbian desires toward Mrs. K. that Freud could not tolerate countertransferentially.

The same occurs with the consideration of bisexuality: we do not speak of bisexual people, reducing the use of the term to the theory of bisexuality in Freudian work.

About homosexuality, it mainly appears to refer to (1) a specific type of transference and (2) a particular phase of the Oedipus complex. Without incorporating elements such as a specific sexual orientation, or even less, a particular trait of the identities of gay people.

Finally, the various trans identities are presented unidimensionally flattened in the category “transsexualism” and “transsexual,” in only two articles: initially in an article called “The Body in the Transsexual” written by Brum (2010) and later in an article commenting Brum’s paper (Moguillansky, 2010), misgendering the trans people (Brum, 2010), treating transsexuality as an “extravagance”(sic) (Moguillansky, 2010) and always referring to the “theoretical contributions” provided by researches of the psychoanalyst Robert Stoller, an article in which the author proposes as a depathologizing perspective, to stop considering transsexuality as a perversion to only understand it as an extravagance (sic).

7.10 IV. Associated Domains

In the RUP the consideration of LGBTIQ + issues focused almost exclusively on male homosexuality and inhabited different domains of reference: the domain of the social issue (as an emerging political discourse), the theoretical formulation (as a descriptive category of psychic processes), the gnoseography (as the basis for the delimitation between normal and abnormal behaviors), and very remotely the experience of clinical practice (as “specific clinic” with “demographically specific people”).

Care for gay patients is only approached in six articles (de León, 2010; de Urtubey, 2000; Fernández, 2004; Flechner, 2006; Gabbard, 2000; Rimano, 2010). In all of them, it is presented the difficulty for analysts to imagine their gay patients as safe, proud, and happy.

It is the case of a teenager abandoned by his parents who comes to live alone in a foreign country and at some point raises fear of becoming gay (Flechner, 2006); the story of a single older adult, educated, who never was “sexually active,” beyond some erotic games with his brother that gave rise to an “suppress homosexuality” on which the analyst has not been reported to have been able to deepen (Fernández, 2004); or a 24-year-old patient who frequents pornographic bookstores where he watches both straight and gay films to masturbate, and he explains to his analyst: “in pornographic films, the most exciting thing is the deep suction in oral sex,” stating that “That’s what I like” (de Urtubey, 2000; Gabbard, 2000). In those cases, talking about client’s homosexual desires never was a possibility for analysts.

The possibility of enabling the consideration and/or exploration of a possible gay identity is always restricted by interpretations where homosexuality is only a defensive symptom that protects the subject from living more archaic anguishes. Subtly, the approaches observed by psychoanalytic therapists focus on analysis to the efforts to modify sexual orientation.

The first and only one paper that is not judgmental is from 2010. Here the analyst outlines a timid statement according to which “The Freudian conception of homosexuality as a perversion is turning out to be limited or perhaps wrong” (de León, 2010, p. 5). Also, she points out the gap she remains sustaining her practice to the extent that “The subject requires a reformulation, mobilizing transference relationships with figures from my training and with the father of psychoanalysis, which leaves me partially orphaned of my identity” (de León, 2010, p. 5).

Elements that demonstrate the scarcity of friendly clinical attitudes from analysts, as well as the lack of openly affirmative approaches in training and practice.

7.11 V. Specification Grids

The analysis revealed very important terms like “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” not appearing in APU. In substitution of these, the authors always refers to the Freudian category “choice of object,” mixing concepts that cannot be unified.

Although critical movements can be observed within the APU discourse, mainly associating the LGBTI + issue with human rights, their treatment is very limited, and the epistemic transition processes—characterized by an effort to abandon pathologizing categories—are not helped by the acquisition of new concepts taken from affirmative perspective. Even when concepts such as sexual orientation or gender identity were widely used in the social context of debates related to the struggles for the recognition of the rights of LGBTI + people. It is even surprising that in a professional community such as that of the Uruguayan Psychoanalytic Association, there is an absolute absence of specific concepts from the psychological field from affirmative psychology, such as minority stress, internalized homophobia, among others. Since this institution is one of the most prestigious professional associations in the country, deeply linked to international academic exchange networks and with members who are perfectly fluent in languages other than Spanish.

However, over the second period reported, new “friendlier” concepts appear, mainly from the reading of authors like Jean Allouch and Joyce McDougall.

One of these concepts is that of “neosexualities,” from which homosexuality is separated from perversion, limiting the use of the concept of perversion to sexual situations in which there is no consent and situations with unequal power relations.

An important aspect to consider regarding this phase of the (non)transition of APU psychoanalysis in our country is the error that the concept of neosexuality generates, (1) when assuming sadomasochistic practices, gayness (read exclusively as a coital variant), or the current sexting and (2) consolidating the view on LGBTI + issues as new social (and psychological) phenomena, ignoring the long historical processes of struggle on the matter.

7.12 Some Summary Conclusions

Although much of the data collected reveals the strong difficulties of APU psychoanalysis to modify points of view with very important heterosexist and cissexist biases (Barrientos & Radi, 2021), it is possible to identify some internal institutional movements aimed at reversing this tradition.

Seen in the light of the theoretical advances promoted by social movements and international psychology, the critical movements generated by the APU within it seem to be excessively rhetorical.

The debate on the transformations necessary to adapt psychoanalysis to contemporary societies does not reach any substantive transformation, presenting a panorama where maintenance of many conservative voices and theoretical resources does not allow an institutional resolution of the conflict. For example, displaying a supposed positive plurality, the journal is used to make explicit any institutional pronouncement regarding the institution’s long homophobic tradition (Gil, 2012).

As can be seen in the only institutional discussion memorandum (de Mello et al., 2016), which is extremely lukewarm in defending the rights of LGBTI + people, their dignity and their subjective equivalence with respect to the heterosexual and cisgender population.

In relation to this, there are three elements to highlight:

• 1. Beyond the intentions of transformation, in none of the articles of the RUP they considered/analyzed the social conditions of life of LGBTI+ people, focusing all the intellectual efforts on determining the normality or abnormality of LGBTI+ people, and hence their ability to exercise full citizenship, for example, to adopt children or become legally recognizable couples. There is no analysis of the contexts of discrimination and institutional violence in which LGBTI+ people live, ignoring these fundamental factors in clinical care for LGBTI+ people.

• 2. Following Barrientos and Radi (2021), standardization biases of LGBTI+ experiences and radical alterization are observed. The problematization of the LGBTI+ issue is reduced to the problem of our psychic architectures in relation to the psychic architectures of heterosexual, cisgender, and allosexual people. In addition, it is problematic that psychoanalytic explanations about any aspect of psychic functioning always require or allude to elements related to the ups and downs of sexual identity.

• 3. An enormous historical and theoretical lag is observed in the dialogue with critical concepts developed by emancipatory social and academic movements, like lesbian and gay studies, queer studies, trans studies, and even some feminists studies. Returning to Barrientos and Radi, it is observed the lax use of the relevant concepts associated with research in this field, identifying that “usually, the concepts of ‘sex,’ ‘gender’ and ‘identity’ are used as if they were categories self-evident and ahistorical, ignoring the way in which knowledge about these issues has advanced in the last 60 years at least. Without recognition of their social and constructed character” (Barrientos & Radi, 2021, par. 16), ignoring classical theoretical debates, such as the idea of “the homosexual role” as a social construction, developed by Mary McIntosh (1968), even when some articles summarily refer to lesbian gay studies and some of their authors like Judith Butler.

In the same direction, the permanent and exclusive internal dialogue with the psychoanalytic community and the absence of dialogue between the psychoanalysis of the APU and other international scientific societies in the field of psychology did not provide key issues discussed in the period, preventing such issues from being incorporated into the institution’s agenda.

Topics like the depathologization of trans identities, the discussions about the efforts to modify sexual orientation or gender identity (OPS, 2012), the dispositions such as the guidelines elaborated by the American Psychological Association for working with gay LGBTI+ people (American Psychological American Psychological Association, 2012; American Psychological Association, 2015), or the public apologies of the American Psychoanalytic Association (Tene, 2019) for having promoted discrimination and trauma to LGBTIQ+ people are not reported in the articles of the RUP.

Although there are efforts to develop an epistemic transformation that dialogues with the emerging rights agenda in the country, it is observed that due to the constant self-reference to psychoanalytic theory as the main—or only—theoretical reference system, transformations are very limited yet. In this sense, a question that should be asked is: is it possible to transform psychoanalysis into a non-patriarchal theory?

Much of the grid of categories on the theory holds ideas based on heteronormative, binary, and cissexist biases, categories from which hypotheses, points of view, and ways of working are formulated. It is very difficult to imagine a substantive transformation of the theory in its political aspects, without touching in depth the shape of the pieces with which the puzzle is assembled. And the roots in theory, sometimes over and above the consideration of empirical reality, do not seem to be a facilitating element of such transformations.

I observed that there is no participation of LGBTI+ people in debates. Even all the texts assume the heterosexuality and cisgenderism of the participating psychoanalysts, reinforcing the place of “objects” of discourse that is intended for LGBTI+ people.

In many passages of the revised texts, the identity and existence of LGBTI+ people are harshly challenged, leading me to ask myself some questions: Would the analysts who write the texts about some LGBTI + patients give you such texts to read? Are LGBTI+ clients granted citizenship and authorship of such speeches? What might an LGBTIQ+ person feel who enters the institution as a psychoanalyst candidate? Even more, what might an analyst who is not only an analyst but also a father, mother, uncle, or has some kind of emotional relationship with an LGBTI+ person feel when reading several of the texts analyzed?

For me, as a member of the LGBTIQ+ community and a psychologist, the virulence of many of the texts is evident when referring to us, our life situations, and our wishes. Identities, life situations, and desires that always pass through the interdiction of the heterosexist and binary gaze of the analysts, whether to recognize ourselves as subjects with the right to life, expression, identity, or to treat us as a whim or a transient trend. Even when the will in the background is something so crazy saves us from ourselves and arms ourselves to its measure, noting a culture of homophobia and amounts of institutionalized homophobia that no other institution in contemporary psychology currently has.

There are many challenges that psychoanalysis has when it comes to rethinking itself in relation to the LGBTI + issue, and possibly the pressure to empiricism and the abandonment of the preservation of theoretical purity are some of the first steps to take, even in the face of the possibility of discarding the theory, something common in science.