Transsexualism and Psychoanalytic Perspectives: Gender Theories and Clinics

Abstract

This paper aims at analysing the pathways developed by psychoanalysis about transsexualism and transgenderism, looking at the evolution of theoretical paradigms and clinical reflections on these issues. The excursus puts in light the radical changes occurred in the psychoanalytic attitude towards transsexualism and gender identity clinics between the nineties and the new century. Specifically, the analysis will focus on the historical and metapsychological reasons involved in the development of an increasingly non-stigmatising and non-judging attitude in psychoanalysis, now more able to give room to the unique subjective experience of transsexual and transgender people. In this transition pathway, a fundamental role has been played by relational psychoanalysis and the Lacanian paradigm.

Such excursus highlights how the focus of psychoanalysis shifts from the construct of gender to new conceptualisations about the relationships between body, mind and culture. Eventually, transsexualism and transgenderism became a stimulus for a psychoanalytic debate which produced new theories about the issue of sexuation and gender emergence.