III.

Theories of Bisexuality

The Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud suggested that sexual life included the child’s capacity to gain pleasure from many different body zones. He described infants and children as “polymorphously perverse”—that is, they could gain sexual pleasure from almost anything. The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung linked bisexuality to the presence in the unconscious of a person’s opposite gender. This he called the “anima” (the woman in the man) and “animus” (the man in the woman), which he said exist as “potentials.”

Despite the widespread inclination of men and women to reproduce, there is no hard evidence that humans have an inborn instinct toward gender-specific sexual behavior—that is, being attracted to one gender only throughout life. If this were not so, attachment to parents of the same gender would be difficult, as would close intimacy with same-gender siblings or friends. Adolescents often develop strong attractions (“crushes”) for same-gender friends as part of normal sexual maturation. Hence, in psychoanalytic theories, bisexuality is a normal part of childhood experience. Its presence in adulthood may be nondifferentiation from this state, or the fulfillment of more than one potential.

Problems arise for bisexual people as most societies have particular taboos that make multiple or varied sexual choices difficult. This can lead to bisexual people feeling that they have to make a forced choice to enter into either exclusive heterosexual or homosexual relationships, which may cause emotional distress to them and their partners. Guilt can arise from the difference between who they really are and how they want to live, and what they believe society expects of them.