„A házaséletet férje mellett megszokta vagy legalábbis eltűri, de néha még élvezi is”
“She Got Used to, at Least Tolerates, and Sometimes Even Enjoys Wedlock”

Images of Lesbians in the Psychiatric Literature of the Kádár Era

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents and analyzes the representations of women’s same-sex desires, sexualities and relationships in state socialist psychiatric and sexology literature. These texts constitute a significant corpus of images of gays and lesbians, both reflecting on and contributing to the discourse on homosexuality. Within the psychological discourses on homosexuality, the case of women shows special characteristics. Women usually appear along a continuum, in which their sexual choices are linked to emotional factors and a general need for intimacy in the first place. There is no “need” for therapeutic conversion for women since the socially prescribed scripts for getting married are strong enough and the lack of sexual pleasure with men is not considered to be a problem. Psycho-medical accounts seem to lack the recognition of lesbian identity or life perspective altogether; lesbianism is interpreted as an early attachment disorder or a substitute for unsatisfying relationships with men. The fundamental therapeutic aim is to achieve good social adaptation and adjustment. In this process, psychology experts are influential representatives of the heteronormative society, reinforcing gender norms and straight family ideals. Scholarly and popular psy- and sexology literature suggests that even though transgressing sexuality was a stronger taboo for men, women’s transgression of marriage was considered a more serious social threat.

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