Mary Keyt Isham: Freud's "Group Psychology", September 7, 1924

"repressed hetero-sexuality" and "hetero-sexual love"

In 1924, in The New York Times, Mary Keyt Isham reviewed Sigmund Freud's newly translated Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, and spoke of "repressed hetero-sexuality" and "hetero-sexual love." She thereby created a document of heterosexual history.

At this early point in the distribution of the heterosexual category, The Times' usage put a - between "hetero" and "sexual". The standard useage had not yet settled on "heterosexual".

Isham was concerned to affirm that even sublimiated heterosexuality is good because it serves the "productive."

Her review also linked heterosexuality with "maturity," thereby deconstructing earlier definitions that had constructed it as morbidity. In her review heterosexuality is presented as the proper endpoint of human development. The Americanization of Freud and of heterosexuality went hand in hand.