What is known about the development of homosexuality?
At the present time, there is no uniformly accepted theory of why some men and some women develop a sexual orientation that is more or less exclusively focused on members of their own sex. Many researchers in the 19th century believed that homosexuality was a mental illness or pathology. They wanted an explanation of homosexuality that would help them prevent and treat what they considered a sexual disorder. Since the 1970s, most professional medical and psychological organizations around the world have rejected the view that homosexuality is a mental disorder [9], and much of the early research on homosexuality is not taken seriously today. Still, it is an interesting question why homosexuality comes to the fore in some people but not in others. The psychiatrist Sigmund Freud believed that there was a degree of bisexuality in all human beings. He believed it was worthwhile to discover how individual psychological development occurred: why people develop their specific sexual interests
