Psychotic panic and feared sexual assault – ‘homosexual panic’: the historical role of feared homosexual assault as a contributing factor to self-attack

ABSTRACT

Some psychotic patients fall into acute persecutory panic, a subjective experience of helpless terror in the face of anticipated imminent annihilation or dismemberment. These states occur in a wide range of psychotic illnesses and are often associated with command hallucinations and fear of homosexual assault. In a desperate attempt to escape from imaginary enemies, such patients often attack themselves and imagine suicide is survivable. This article addresses the dread of homosexual assault, previously referred to as homosexual panic, and its relationship to patients who attack themselves in a state of desperate psychotic persecution.

KEYWORDS:

• Paranoia
• homosexual panic
• psychosis
• terror
• suicide

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

No funding agency or grants were involved in the creation of this work.

Notes on contributors

Mark J Goldblatt

Mark J. Goldblatt, is a faculty member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Clinical Associate at McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts, and he is a member of the Boston Suicide Study Group.

John T Maltsberger

John T. Maltsberger, died in October 2016 after a long career studying and teaching about suicide and psychoanalysis. He was Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, and affiliated with the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, the Massachusetts General Hospital, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, USA. He was the founding member of the Boston Suicide Study Group.