Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, June, 1995 by Michele J. Eliason
Very little research has focused on the ways that heterosexual people perceive their sexual identity. This paper explores heterosexual identity from the standpoint of an established identity model, that of James Marcia. Twenty-six heterosexual undergraduate students (14 men: 3 African-American, 1 Latino, and 10 White, and 12 women: 3 African-American, 1 Latina, and 8 White) wrote two-three page essays on how their sexual identities formed and how they influence their daily lives. Students could be categorized into all four of Marcia's identity statuses Additionally, six common themes were noted in their essays: had never thought about sexual identity; society made me heterosexual; gender determines sexual identity; issues of choice versus innateness of sexuality; no alternative to heterosexuality; and the influence of religion.
The vast majority of literature on sexual identity has taken one of two forms: studies of gay or lesbian identity development or studies of heterosexuals' attitudes about lesbian, gay, or bisexual people. These studies often assume that heterosexuals are a monolithic, stable group with predictable attitudes about nonheterosexuals and a consistent and clear sense of their own (hetero)sexual identity. Rarely has research addressed the question of how heterosexuals achieve a sexual identity, or questioned the stability or homogeneity of this identity, or indeed, asked whether most heterosexuals experience themselves as even having a sexual identity.
One of the earliest theoretical models of heterosexuality comes from Freud. Weeks (1985) described the evolution of Freud's theory of sexuality as follows. Freud ultimately felt that a sexual identity was a precarious construct, always threatened by repressed desires. Sexual identity formation begins shortly after birth, as the child progresses through psychosexual stages. Freud felt that a key component of sexuality was the early assumption of the child that all humans are genitally alike, with a penis. When faced with people without penises, boys could develop castration anxiety and girls could develop penis envy. These emotions paved the way for the Oedipal complex of the phallic stage, whereby the child learns to repress sexual desire for the mother and to identify with the same-sex parent. If the conflict is successfully resolved, at maturity the individual will select partners of the other gender. Freud thought that humans were born "polymorphously perverse" or capable of sexual attractions to anyone (or thing), and only by a complex and traumatic psychic family drama, did heterosexual identity emerge. In his three essays on sexuality in 1905, Freud follows a discussion of homosexuality with this statement. "Thus, from the point of view of psychoanalysis the exclusive sexual interest felt by men for women is also a problem that needs elucidating and is not a self-evident fact based upon an attraction that is ultimately of a chemical nature" (p. 11). Interestingly, homosexual desire is a key component of early sexuality, as the lines of desire and identification blur. de Kuyper (1993) suggested that "normal" resolution of the Oedipal complex results in male homophobia (fear of one's own homosexual desires). Freud is one of the few theorists of this century to point out the constructedness of heterosexuality, but few who followed him pursued this point.
Erik Erikson (1986) was among the first of contemporary theorists to stress the importance of identity development. He suggested that personal identity leads to individuality and consists of authentic truths about one's self. In his developmental stage theory, Erikson proposed that identity is the major crisis of the adolescent (at least for males; Erikson thought that identity and intimacy were achieved more or less simultaneously for women, since he thought that a woman's identity depended on a relationship to a man). In Erikson's scheme, adolescence or young adulthood would be a crucial time of achieving identity, unlike Freud, who thought that events in early childhood most strongly influenced the emergence of an identity in adolescence. For Erikson, heterosexuality is assumed and no alternative models of sexual identity are available. Yet, his theory is significant, as he proposed that the adolescent identity crisis must be resolved before healthy intimate relationships are possible.
James Marcia (1987) proposed that identity could exist in different states or statuses, depending on whether exploration and commitment were present. The four identity statuses that he described were:
1. diffusion--the person has no active sense of identity and there has been no exploration and no commitment to any identity.
2. foreclosure--the person has accepted an identity imposed by another or by societal expectations. This person accepts the identity without critique and without exploring options.
3. moratorium--the person is in the active stage of exploring an identity, but has not yet made a commitment.
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