From Platonic Love to Mimic Love: The Psychic Implications of a Thousand-Year-Old Homophobia

Abstract

In Ancient Greece, Platonic love referred to a sexual, intellectual, and emotional relationship between two men, one young and one older. It was the most valued relationship by the Greeks, but it was censured by Christians. They redefined platonic love as a friendly relationship because they have made heterosexuality the exclusive basis of their society. Their intention was to produce as many humans as possible in order to colonize other populations. Later, secular democracies have resumed their purpose by repressing homosexuals ever more violently. Their extermination caused no judgment, no compensation, for no country. Still today, homosexuals represent internationally what men should not be and are usually the whipping boy. Although a great part of the culture was made by them, no society values them. On the contrary, all of them seem to censor the sexual inclinations of their great men. Homosexuality is rather presented as a marginality, a sin, a disease, or a defect that should be avoided. It can generate aggression in those who perceive it, and it causes fear, shame, or guilt in those who experience it. All these feelings that gays internalize, lead them to submit to the only social model that exists in the West: heteronormativity. Moreover, censorship let them think that there is no other social norm than reproduction. So instead of questioning it and creating homonormativities as it existed before the Christian era, they identify with heterosexuals and mimic their way of life. They also want to live together, to start a family, to marry, to be faithful, to have children by assisting reproduction/surrogacy, or by adopting if the heterosexuals of their country allowed them to do so. From the platonic love that valued homosexuality to the mimic love that denies it, gays of the West are therefore driven to imitate heterosexuals, without being aware of the psychic process that lead them to it. Some of them break free and invent their own way of life by doing psychotherapy with a professional who is himself aware of the situation, but outside of this case, most of gays remain locked in a heteronormative model that oppresses them. Would recognition of censorship and crimes they have been victims of for millennia allow them to emancipate from the identification with their aggressors and from the heteronormativity?