Projecting and hating the ‘failed man’: narcissism and the making of homophobia

This paper considers homophobia towards gay men through a psychoanalytic lens, arguing that it operates as a narcissistic defence – a structural intolerance of difference resolved through idealising the self and devaluing what is disowned. This reverses Freud’s original position that it was homosexuality which was narcissistic by design. Written from inside my experience as a gay clinician, and drawing on Mollitt’s autoethnographic approach alongside Butler, Moss, Brenman and others, homophobia is conceptualised as a defensive solution binding the terror of failed masculinity. Gay men become the containers for disowned parts of the self, moving the narcissistic disturbance from one group to another through the operation of an internal narcissistic gang upholding the rules of hegemonic masculinity. Two clinical vignettes illustrate how homophobic material can recruit the gay clinician into these gang-like structures by mobilising his own internalised homophobia. Finally, I consider how, against the backdrop of heteronormativity, institutional group defences and our investment in not thinking about internal gender and sexual differences together shape whether our profession is able to overcome its institutional homophobia.