Affective Guidance of Sexual Identity Construction: The Intra-psychological Level in the Service of Culture

A look at homophobia from the perspective of dialogical self provides an opportunity to investigate the intra-psychological level of its psychological bases. Homophobia is a result of socio-cultural guidance of internalization. It can be viewed as an internalized, transformed, and integrated social message that has penetrated the personal core of the self and which becomes externalized in various social contexts. Through the internalized personal construction of homophobia we can observe how social control by institutions reaches its maximum extension into the human mind.