The homosexual act is not a sexual one. It is based on the denial of real sexuality and the acting out symbolically through sex of a need for love. A truly sexual person is heterosexual. The homosexual has usually eroticized his need so that he appears to be highly sexed. Bereft of his sexual fix, his lover, he is like an addict without his connection; without his lover, he is in the Pain that is always there but which is drained off sexually. But sex is not the goal - love is.

The homosexual is usually the tensest of all neurotics because of how far he has been made to go from his real self. The tension can drive him to liquor, drugs, and compulsive sex, and these outlets are still not enough. Many homosexuals I have seen report psychosomatic complaints. The violence we see in homosexuals is the result of self-denial. When a person cannot be what he is, he is angry.

So long as old denials exist, they will impel distorted and perverted symbolic behavior. Homosexual marriages, for example, may go on for years. Both partners seem satisfied and loved, yet there exists a high tension level and homosexuality (neurosis). Why? Because homosexual lovers are satisfying themselves symbolically and not actually. They are usually trying to get Father's love out of each other. When they feel this real need, the symbolic quest drops away. Homosexuality is not a special disease; it is only a different route for the satisfaction of deprived and often denied need.

As for going "straight" without solving the neurosis, that only deepens the lie; it means to pretend to give up the need for the father's love, and no one can do that so long as that need is there and real. The only way to get rid of that need is to feel it.

If a person cannot be what he is, he will have to search for his identity. He will be foredoomed never to find it, since it is no more than the real, feeling self which was not allowed expression. Thus the search for identity is a neurotic enterprise, carried on by unfeeling people who generally need to find something or someone outside themselves to tell them what or who they are inside. The post-Primal patient, for example, would not suffer from an identity crisis. Because he feels, he would have no reason to wonder who he really is. (Janov, "The Primal Scream", p. 322, 326).