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Showing posts with label psychiatrist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychiatrist. Show all posts

06 December 2023

Jeanne Hoff (1938 – 2023) psychiatrist

++original September 2013, revised February 2019 to include extra detail from Gill-Peterson's book, and December 2023 to acknowledge Jeanne's passing.

Eugene Hoff  was born in in St Louis.  Hoff did an MD at Columbia University, College of Physicians And Surgeons 1963 followed by a doctorate in solid state chemistry at University College, London (where he also converted to Catholicism), followed by training and a residency as a psychiatrist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri.

Hoffinitially thought of himself as homosexual, but in exploring homosexuality found out that he was not. He was introduced to the Harry Benjamin practice, possibly by Wardell Pomeroy of the Kinsey Institute.

Hoff was a guest on the NBC television program Not for Women Only where he (as she was still) explained transsexualism from a medical viewpoint referring to trans women as 'men' as was the then practice.
"You can say that you know that you are a woman, therefore you want to be one. But no woman I have ever asked has been able to tell me what that means, and I doubt that transsexuals will be the first to define it."
Harry Benjamin's successor Charles Ihlenfeld resigned the practice in 1976 to begin a psychiatric residency in the Bronx, and Hoff took over.  This was Hoff's first clinical practice other than the residency in St Louis.  The practice was being managed under the aegis of the Orentreich Medical Group, a dermatology and hair restoration practice, which was located at in the same building as the Benjamin practice at 1 East 72nd St. It was then still administered by Benjamin's office manager and assistant Virginia Allen.

Hoff fired Virginia, the nurse, Mary Ryan, and the physician, Agnes Nagy, and pleased Dr Orentreich by moving the practice downtown to a townhouse behind the Chelsea Hotel, at 223 West 22nd Street.

In this period Dr Hoff confronted the homophobic psychiatrist Charles Socarides in a television debate and challenged his reactionary views that homosexuality can be cured by psychoanalysis. 

Hoff was starting her own transition.
 
Her best known patient was the punk musician Jayne County, who wrote in her autobiography: 

"When I walked into the consulting room for my appointment, I nearly fainted: Dr Jean Hoff was a man who was going through the sex change himself. She looked like a woman in man's clothes, she wore men's clothes and no make-up, and she had short hair that was just beginning to grow out. Later on she went through the full change, changed her name to Janine Hoffand got her own practice.   
The best thing about Dr Hoff was that she kept asking me questions about myself over and over again, to make sure that I really knew what I wanted. She'd say things like, 'Do you think you'd ever go back to wearing men's clothes?' and I'd say, Yeah, sometimes I see a jacket I like and think it might be fun to wear.'  At the time I was talking to her about the full sex change, but I was really quite afraid, and I thought it would cut me offfrom all my folks. She said to me, 'Look, there are different degrees of transsexualism. You are a transsexual, but not all transsexuals have a full sex change. Some people are better offjust taking hormones and dressing as a woman. There are some transsexuals who go back to dressing as men. There are so many different degrees, and you shouldn't just assume that because you are transsexual you have to have a sex change. You should only get a sex change if you are one hundred and twenty five per cent sure about it. If you have the least hesitation about it, don't do it.'  That was one of the best pieces of advice anyone ever gave me. Dr Hoff also said that, given the kind of circles I was moving in, there really wasn't much need for me to have a sex change." 

Becoming Jeanne, 1979



Hoff completed her transition to Jeanne with surgery with Dr Granato in 1977. She was interviewed at home by Lynn Redgrave and Frank Fields immediately before surgery and two months afterwards. The resulting television program "Becoming Jeanne" won the prestigious Ohio State Broadcasting award in 1979.





It was now the case that for the first time a trans psychiatrist was in charge of a practice for trans persons. Gill-Peterson comments:
"Though the medical model was still based in gatekeeping and an unacknowledged racialization of gender, Hoff cared deeply about the well-being of her clients to a degree that is viscerally embedded in the archive she gifted to the Kinsey Institute. Her work demonstrates a level of empathy entirely absent from transsexual medicine since its advent—not to mention its predecessors in the early twentieth century— an ethic of care that, although greatly constrained by the material circumstances and history of psychiatry and endocrinology, was also entangled with her situated perspective as a trans woman. It is important to underline that Hoff represents yet another trans person who took an active and complicated role in medicine, rather than being its object."
Gill-Peterson has read Hoff's interview notes in her archive papers at the Kinsey Institute, and comments:
"Because she took the time to interview them without only reducing what they said to standard diagnostic biographies, her notes offer comparatively richer glimpses into trans boyhood than those of her predecessors." 

 

In 1978 Hoff became aware of a young black trans woman, then 30, who had been committed to a psychiatric Institution in New Jersey for 15 years.  Initially labeled  ‘schizophrenic’, her gender identity issues were taken as evidence of ‘delusion’, ‘mental retardation’ and ‘sexual perversion’. Hoff interviewed her, and petitioned for her release.
“Through all the florid language of the [psychiatric] reports there is an unmistakable moralistic disapproval of her effeminacy and homosexuality but not the slightest hint that the diagnosis of transsexualism was suspected, even though it was quite evident from the details provided. . . . She should be placed in the community, preferably living by herself” and “she should be permitted to explore the various problems that arise from cross-gender living, hormonal therapy, and surgical gender reassignment.” (quoted in Gill-Peterson)


However by 1980 there were few patients left in the practice, and Hoff had already taken a job in a psych ward in Brooklyn. The next year she sold the building on West 22nd St and moved away, first to Massachusetts and then California.

She became a psychiatrist at San Quentin prison. She was in the news in April-May 1998 when she was the only one of three psychiatrists to testify that murderer Horace Kelly might be competent to be executed, and the defense attorney attempted to impeach Hoff.

She retired after being assaulted during a counseling session by a death-row inmate.

In 2013 she donated her archives to the Kinsey Institute.

Jeanne Hoff died at age 85. 
  • "Masculine, Feminine or Androgynous?" Not for Women Only. WNBC 1976  hosted by Polly Bergen and Frank Fields, produced by Madeline Amgott.  Archive 
  • Becoming Jeanne…A Search for Sexual Identity. NBC 30 June 1978. Jeanne Hoff interviewed by Lynn Redgrave and Frank Fields.
  • Kathleen Casey.  "Gay Catholics Hear Transsexual's Story".  Asbury Park Press, October 10, 1978: 23. 
  • Jeanne Hoff. "Multiple personality disorder?" The Journal of clinical psychiatry, 48(4), Apr 1987. 
  • Jayne County with Rupert Smith. Man Enough to be a Woman. London: Serpent's Tail, 1995: 99-100.
  • Michael Dougan. "Killer's mental records turn up". SFGate, April 17, 1998. Online,
  • Maria L LaGanga. "Killer Understands He Faces Execution, Prosecutor Says". Los Angeles Times, May 01, 1998. Online.
  • Michael Dougan. "Sanity trial outcome rests with minutiae". SFGate, May 5, 1998. Online.
  • Sara Catania. "The Alienists: Where experts divide, jury must decide". LAWeekly, May 13 1998.  Archive.
  • Andy Humm. "Socarides, Leading Anti-Gay Shrink, Dies". Gay City, 4,52 Dec 29-Jan 4, 2005. 
  • "Jeanne Hoff Archive". The Kinsey Institute. Online
  • SJ Parker. Emails to Zagria, 15,17 September 2013.
  • Julian Gill-Peterson. Histories of the Trangender Child. University of Minnesota Press, 2018: 159-160, 171, 174, 192-3, 248n105, 251n32, 252n45, 253n79-82, 254n84-5.
  • Andy Humm.  "Jeanne Hoff, first trans psychiatrist to serve trans people, dies at 85".  Gay City News, December 5, 2023.  Online
____________________________________________________________________________

Although Horace Kelly's lawyer subpoenaed Hoff's prison personnel file in an attempt to impeach her, he presumably hadn't heard rumours that she was transsexual, didn't find it in the file and didn't read her.   Otherwise he probably would have used it to defame her.   She had been in the 1978 television special under the same name, but that was 20 years earlier.   Before the Internet it was much more difficult to make connections.

Jeanne was also, in effect, outed in Jayne County's 1995 autobiography, but presumably the lawyer didn't read punk biographies.  

+++ Other sources led me to write that Hoff left New York in 1981, having sold her building at 223 West 22nd Street.  Gill-Peterson writes that she stayed in practice through the 1980s.  ??


13 June 2023

Jan Wålinder (1931-2014) psychiatrist, chief physician, sex change doctor

Jan Wålinder, the son of a civil engineer, was raised in Eskilstuna, 100 km west of Stockholm. He studied medicine at Uppsala University from 1952, and was licensed as a doctor in 1958. He spent a year at the Maudsley Hospital in London, 1961-2. In 1964, his boss, Hans Forssman, became a professor at the University of Gothenburg and chief physician at Sankt Jörgen Hospital in Gothenburg; Wålinder transferred with him.

From 1962–1974, 92 patients were referred to the University clinic, Sankt Jörgens hospital, for evaluation as transsexuals. Wålinder became the doctor leading the program. Fifty-two of these were considered transsexual and accepted for a sex reassignment program.

Wålinder published a first paper on occasional derivation of transvestism/transsexualism from cerebral dysfunction in 1965. 

He wrote his dissertation in 1967, based on the patients in the program and a review of the then published literature. 

He adhered to the then convention of using birth sex rather than gender identity – thus trans women are ‘male’ and ‘he’, and trans men are ‘female’ and ‘she’. Like many others, he incorrectly claimed that Hirschfeld had coined the term ‘transvestism’.

He analysed 207 cases that he found in the existing literature – 185 ‘males’ and 22 ‘females’. He found 70% had cross-gender behavior before the age of 10; that intelligence was distributed along the normal curve for the population; that 10 of the 207 had a family member who also cross-dressed; that 33% had adnormal EEG readings, and five of those also had epilepsy.

In February 1965 Wålinder sent a letter to every psychiatrist (child psychiatrists excluded) in Sweden asking about any trans patients that they had treated:

“Seventy-six per cent, or 361 out of the 474 psychiatrists answered the letter, and together reported 91 cases. Most of them gave detailed descriptions of their cases by letter or on the telephone. A few were unwilling to disclose any details about their patients, and these had to be excluded. Two of the patients were not known for sure to be alive on the census date, and these were also excluded. All patients under 15 were also excluded.

Sixty-seven of the remainder reported were transsexuals, judging by the safest criterion to use when one cannot interview the patient personally -- they wanted a surgical change in sex. It was checked that none were registered more than once. Including my own 43 cases, this gave 110 transsexuals in Sweden on December 31, 1965. Sweden having a population of ca. 5.96 million over 15 years of age, this meant a prevalence of ca. 1 per 54,000. Eighty-one of the 110 were men and 29 women, giving a male/female ratio of about 2.8:1, and a prevalence of ca. 1 per 37,000 for men and ca. 1 per 103,000 for women.

Transsexualism is naturally more common than indicated by these figures, which only stand for transsexuals under so much strain because of their anomaly that they had to consult a psychiatrist. Six of the 110 were foreigners, but only 3 of them appear to have come to Sweden expressly for a "change in sex". As I know of some Swedish transsexuals who have gone to other countries to have plastic surgery done, the admixture of these 3 persons to the series should not distort the figures for prevalence.”

Of the patients who came to the program at Sankt Jörgens hospital: 

“Personal examination of the subjects, including: their personal accounts of their history, with the interviews conducted on informal lines in each case; physical and neurologic examination; body measurements; EEG-examinations; hormone analysis; examination of sex chromatin, occasionally supplemented with determination of the karyotype; analysis of personality by means of a questionnaire; psychologic tests of intellectual capacity and masculinity-femininity; examination for psychiatric disorders. In each case I first had an informal conversation with the patient, when he or she gave me a brief account of their troubles. The next time we met they were asked to describe their particular problems in detail. After these two interviews, the patients gave an account of their history along the lines of a questionnaire used routinely at our institute. Most of the patients stayed at the hospital for a week or so while the examinations were being made.” 

Information was also gathered on the patients from their families and/or spouse, hospital records and social agencies.

Treatment:

“Ten men got no specific treatment, 11 only got estrogen treatment, 5 got estrogen treatment and afterwards a conversion operation. Eight got their name changed legally, all 8 after estrogen medication and 4 in combination with a conversion operation.

Two women got no specific treatment, 1 woman got only androgen treatment, 8 got their breasts amputated after androgen treatment, and 9 had their name changed legally, all after treatment with androgens and 7 in combination with a removal of their breasts.

In all except 3 cases of operation or change of name too little time has elapsed to be able to say anything definite about the results. The length of follow-up for the men who had an operation or their name changed now amounts to 20.7 months on the average (median 24.5 months) and for the women to 42.3 months (median 26.2 months). The patients themselves all said, however, that these measures had made it easier for them to adjust, made them more stable mentally, and improved their sex life. None regretted what had been done. None showed any signs of the treatment having an adverse mental effect.

On the whole, the women seemed to have profited more from their treatment than the men.

All patients were given supportive psychotherapy in order to help them cope with their problems, and various measures were taken to provide a better social adjustment.”

A notable difference between Wålinder’s study and that of Benjamin, published the year before, is the factor of organic causes which apply in some cases.

“Several authors have suggested that transsexualism is of organic origin, that it is due to genetic, hormonal or cerebrolesional mechanisms. Data pointing to an organic factor in my series were: (1) The large number of abnormal EEG's. Epilepsy was over-represented in the cases I collected from the literature, and 1 of the 43 transsexuals in my own series was epileptic and another got a grand mal attack during photostimulation. I have already reported (Wålinder, 1965) that cerebrolesional factors have been noted in cases of different kinds of sexual aberration. (2) In 1 of the present cases the transsexualism started some years after a severe head injury, no signs of deviation being observed before; in this case the transsexualism disappeared on anticonvulsant medication (given because of an abnormal EEG) and reappeared when the medication was stopped. (3) The familial occurrence in 4 cases of mental retardation, cerebrolesional signs and abnormal EEG's, pointing to the possibility of a hereditary disorder in cerebral functioning. (4) Definite evidence of an early cerebral lesion in 1 case (case 1) and the possibility of such in case 16. Adding together these cases gives 15, or about 35 per cent, with evidence of an organic disorder (cases 1, 4, 7, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 23, 25, 29, 31, 33, 38, 42).

It is unlikely that the same mechanism lies back of every case of transsexualism. On the other hand, disorders in cerebral functioning may cause a wide variety of mental disorders, the kind probably depending on the site of the injury, and the age at which it occurs. In view of NS, and the usually early onset of transsexualism, the injury must occur early in life if transsexualism is of organic origin. One can influence the sexual behavior of animals by giving hormones prenatally … My study of prenatal and perinatal factors, however, did not reveal any circumstances of note.

Of particular interest when discussing the possibility of an organic factor are the cases in which treatment of a hormonal disorder … or treatment of cerebrolesional disorders … eliminated or lessened the intensity of the transsexualism" transvestism. My case 15 is another example. In all these 3 cases the symptoms were reversible and, in my case at least, they began later than in most cases. In the majority of cases, however, the transsexualism begins early in life and does not respond to treatment. The consistency from case to case is compatible with some form of organic disposition.

My investigation has shown that it is hardly possible to attribute transsexualism to only psychologic or only organic causes. Circumstances pointing to organic origin were present in some cases, and circumstances pointing to environmental origin were present in others. It is reasonable to assume that the two kinds of factors interact, that environmental factors in the wide sense shape and determine how the transsexualism develops, and that some unfavorable external factors precipitate the transsexualism, or turn what was only a disposition to transsexualism into a permanent, fixed form of the anomaly. It is also possible that psychologic factors affect the fixity of the transsexualism, and help to make it irreversible after puberty.”

The dissertation, published 1967, led to his becoming an associate professor in psychiatry. 

Harry Benjamin in New York read Wålinder’s study and tested the claim re an anti-convulsant drug and tried Dilantin with a few transvestites who wanted to be cured, and two transsexuals who were willing to experiment. This apparently worked for some of the transvestites who desisted [for a while at least] but it had no effect on the transsexuals. Leo Wollman, in a lapse of ethics, prescribed Dilantin instead of estrogen to Lyn Raskin - and it had no effect at all on her yearning to be a woman.


In 1968 Wålinder published a summary in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. He repeated his definition:

“The line between transvestism and transsexualism drawn by many authors has been and still is all too obscure. As long as no definite criteria are employed to differentiate these two groups, progress in understanding of the conditions will be limited,

In an investigation of 48 cases of transsexualism primarily segregated according to Benjamin’s (1966) criteria, the following variables were noted in 100% of the subjects:

  1. A sense of belonging to the opposite sex, of having been born into the wrong sex, of being one of nature’s extant errors.
  2. A sense of estrangement with one’s own body; all indications of sex differentiation are considered as afflictions and repugnant.
  3. A strong desire to resemble physically the opposite sex via therapy including surgery.
  4. A desire to be accepted by the community as belonging to the opposite sex.

The fundamental, primary disturbance appears to be a feeling of contrary sex-orientation, i.e. inverted core gender identity in Stolleu’s (1964, a, b, c ) meaning. All of the other symptoms seem to cluster around this erroneous sex identity.”

In 1969 he contributed two papers to the Richard Green & John Money anthology, Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment: one on parental age and birth order of transsexuals, and one on the situation in Sweden.

He gave a paper at the Reed Erickson sponsored September 1971, Second International Symposium on Gender Identity in Elsinore, Denmark re legal changes for trans persons in Sweden.

In 1974 he became the chief physician at Sankt Jörgen Hospital

From 1992-1996 he was professor of psychiatry and chief physician at Linköping University and Linköping Regional Hospital, where he stayed for 18 years, 

In 1996 Wålinder responded to a paper ‘Men as women’ by Stig-Eric Olsson, Inge Jansson, and Anders Möller in the Nordic Journal of Psychiatry:

“The authors of the previous article state that ‘the phenomenon of transsexualism is still controversial from a medical standpoint’. On the contrary, transsexualism is a well-recognized disorder and identified in DSM IV under the heading ‘Gender identity disorder’. The authors’ statement that ‘reports in the medical literature on psychologic adjustment after sex change treatment are rare’ indicates that they are unfamiliar with current research in the field.

It goes without saying that, given the irreversibility of sex reassignment surgery, the need for investigation of prognostic factors is compelling. Such factors have already been identified. In a Swedish sample of more than 200 sex-reassigned persons 3.8% have in some way regretted measures taken. Any one of these cases tells a sad story and is indeed a tragedy. If we consider the years from the early 1950s until now, the figures for repentance cases have steadily decreased, and of those who have been sex-reassigned after 1982 only one person has regretted what was once done. Thus, outcome has improved over the years owing to improved assessment and, consequently, more restricted inclusion criteria, improved surgical techniques, and more attention paid to psychosocial guidance and careful posttreatment follow-up procedures.

At-random-presented cases do not invalidate a worldwide pool of data that speak in favour of a successful outcome in cases that have been carefully selected for sex reassignment. These outcome data comprise in a strict sense both medical and psychologic factors.”


Wålinder was due to retire in 1997, but stayed an extra couple of years to secure the future of research projects. He returned to Gothenburg where his children lived. There he became involved with adult psychiatric reception at a clinic in Mölnlycke just outside Gothenburg.

Jan Wålinder died age 83.





----------------

Wålinder on trans topics:

  • “Transvestism, definition and evidence in favor of occasional derivation from cerebral dysfunction”. International Journal of Neuropsychiatry, 1, 1965.
  • Transsexualism: a study of forty-three cases. Goteborg Akademiforlaget, 1967.
  • “Transsexualism: Definition, Prevalence and Sex Distribution”. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 43, 1968.
  • “Transsexuals: Physical Characteristics, Parental Age, and Birth Order” and “Medicolegal Aspects of Transsexualism in Sweden” in Richard Green & John Money (eds). Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment. The Johns Hopkins Press, 1969.
  • with Hans Olof Åkesson. “Transsexualism. Effect on Rate and Density-Pattern of Change of Residence”. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 115, 522, 1969.
  • “Incidence and Sex Ratio of Transsexualism in Sweden”. British Journal of Psychiatry, 119, 1971.
  • “A Proposal for a New Law Concerning Sex Assignment of Transsexuals in Sweden”. Second International Symposium on Gender Identity, Elsinore, 12-14 September 1971.
  • with Inga Thuwe. “A law concerning sex reassignment of transsexuals in Sweden”. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 5, 3, 1976.
  • with Inga Thuwe. “A Study of Consanguinity Between the Parents of Transsexuals”. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 131, 1, 1977.
  • with M W Ross, B Lundströ & Inga Thuwe. “Cross-cultural approaches to transsexualism”. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 63,1. 1981.
  • with Bengt Lundström. “Evaluation of candidates for sex reassignment”. Nordisk Psykiatrisk Tidsskrift, 39, 3, 1985.
  • “Comments on the paper ‘Men as women’ by Stig-Eric Olsson, Inge Jansson, and Anders Möller. Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, 50, 5, 1996.
  • Mikael Landén, Jan Wålinder, and Bengt Lundström. “Prevalence, Incidence, and Sex Ratio of Transsexualism”. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 93, 1996.

Jan Wålinder otherwise specialised in affective diseases: depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia. Writings on these and other topics   more.

Other:

  • Stoller, R. J . (1964 a ) : “A contribution to the study of gender identity”. Int. J . PsychoAnal., 45, 220.
  • Stoller, R. 1. (1964 b ) : The hermaphroditic identity of hermaphrodites. J . new. ment., 139, 453.
  • Stoller, R. 1, (1964 c): Gender-role change in intersexed patients. J A M A , 188, 684.
  • Harry Benjamin. “Newer Aspects of the Transsexual Phenomenon”. The Journal of Sex Research, 5,2, May 1969.
  • Erika Alm. “What constitutes an in/significant organ? The vicissitudes of juridical and medical decision-making regarding genital surgery for intersex and trans people in Sweden”. In Gabriele Griffin & Malin Jordal (eds). Body, Migration, Re/Constructive Surgeries. Routledge, 2019: 225-240.
  • Lyn Raskin. Diary of a Transsexual. The Olympia Press, 1971: 38.
  • Joanne Proctor writing as P J Schrödinger. “DSM-5: Gender Identity – Creating the Trans epidemic” Trans-friedfluff, December 27, Online.
  • Miki Agerberg, “»Jag lär mig något nytt varje dag«”. se, 2013-10-15. Online.

SV.Wikipedia

28 June 2022

The DSM - Part III: comments

Part I: history of the APA 
Part III: comments
Comments

Homosexuality never was in the DSMs in the way that Transsexuality and Transvestism later were. DSMs I and II had simple lists of Sexual Deviations that included Homosexuality and Transvestitism along with Fetishism, Pedophilia, Exhibitionism, Voyeurism, Sadism and Masochism without giving diagnostic criteria or any other comments. As the campaign to get Homosexuality delisted happened at this time, the delisting was easier.

Transsexualism/Gender Identity Disorder (GID)/Gender Dysphoria (GD) is not mentioned at all in DSM I or DSM II.

The 1973 decision to remove Homosexuality from the DSM was because other ‘sexual deviations’ “regularly caused subjective distress or were associated with generalized impairment in social effectiveness or functioning” but Homosexuality did not. There were always at least some trans persons who likewise did not suffer such distress or impairment. However it was not until DSM V in 2013 Criterion B “clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning” that the definition of GID/GD was restricted to those who actually need therapy.

In the 1960s and 1970s Virginia Prince had advocated that the word ‘transvestite’ be restricted to heterosexual transvestites. This was accepted in DSM III 1980. However to her chagrin, in DSM III-R 1987 Transvestism was renamed as Transvestic Fetishism. Prince had always drawn a clear line between Transvestism and Fetishism but the DSM had removed that line.

The restriction of the term ‘Transvestism’ to heterosexual males as a form of sexual excitement is objectionable as there are many other forms of transvesting. However it was this particular subset who were most likely to seek psychotherapy.

Some reacted to this restriction of the term by referring to gay and female transvestites as cross-dressers. While the Princian groups also later used ‘cross-dresser’ for themselves, the DSM used it for both transvestites and transsexuals. Neither usage has prevailed.

The 302 code was first introduced in DSM II 1968 for ‘Sexual Deviations’. While Gender Identity Disorder/Gender Dysphoria were distinguished from Transvestism/Transvestic Fetishism/Transvestic Disorder – especially in DSM III and DSM V (but not in DSM IV) – when they were separated by hundreds of pages, they continued to share the 302 code.

The word ‘autogynephilic’ appears only in DSM V 2013. Note that it is used only as a variation of Transvestic Disorder. There is no suggestion of there being autogynephilic transsexuals.

Is Gender Dysphoria the same as Gender Identity Disorder? Some regard it as simply a renaming. Others regard GD as no longer a Disorder, but only as a category retained for billing US insurance companies. The claim is that GD is not a Disorder in itself, but distress caused by gender incongruence. The wording is certainly more polite, but remember that the term Gender Dysphoria was coined by psychiatrist Norman Fisk in 1972 because Transsexualism was losing its medical connotations, and he wanted to remedicalize the concept.

In saying that Gender Dysphoria is “a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender” the DSM still ignores and denies the lack of acceptance and outright hostility that many trans persons encounter.

Some transitioning trans persons do need therapy and for others a requirement of therapy (especially from therapists who have not themselves transitioned) is at best an irritant. Even DSM V does not admit this, but the B criteria for Gender Dysphoria “the condition is associated with clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning” does actually imply that those trans persons who have been able to arrange a continuation of work, and are receiving hormones, electrolysis etc as required and desired are not Gender Dysphoric and do not need therapy.

As we find in the work of Anne Vitale, early transitioners and alumni from the gay or lesbian scene often do not require therapy (although peer support is good) while late transitioners who have spent decades conforming to their birth gender often suffer from what she calls Gender Deprivation Anxiety Disorder (GEDAD).

Vitale has never been on a DSM work group, and come to that - although there are several noted psychologists, psychiatrists and sexologists who have transitioned - no trans person has been on DSM work groups.

The DSM dropping of ‘transsexual’ for GID and then GD has interacted of course with language political correctness where we are being told that we should not distinguish Transsexual from Transvestite - that we are all Transgender. Transsexual is said to be too clinical. However it remains necessary to designate surgery-track trans persons, and far too often these are being designated as Gender Dysphoric - Fisk’s even more clinical term.

If the retention of Gender Dysphoria is only for US insurance billing, it strenghens the argument that the DSM should not be used in other countries.

The APA has equivocated on whether Intersex persons can be Transsexual/GID/GD. In DSM III “In physical intersex the individual may have a disturbance in gender identity. However, the presence of abnormal sexual structures rules out the diagnosis of Transsexualism.” In DSM IV “The disturbance is not concurrent with a physical intersex condition.” In DSM V the physician is to note if a Gender Dysphoric person has a “disorder of sex development (DSD)”. The usage of the DSD terminology indicates that this was not decided in consultation with Intersex activists as almost all of them reject the term. However this does admit that a person may be both Intersex and GD.

It was a problem in the 1970s and 1980s that cishet psychiatrists and sexologists did not seem to be able to distinguish trans kids from Gender Non-Conforming children. This was openly admitted in Richard Green’s The "Sissy Boy Syndrome" and the Development of Homosexuality. Hopefully that problem is now in the past.

27 June 2022

The DSM - Part II: reading the 7 versions of the DSM

Part I: history of the APA 
Part II:  reading the 7 versions of the DSM 
Part III: comments

DSM I, 1952 145 pages

There is no section for Homosexuality or anything trans.


However under *000-x50 Personality Trait Disturbance* we find:

*000-x63 Sexual deviation*

This diagnosis is reserved for deviant sexuality which is not symptomatic of more extensive syndromes, such as schizophrenic and obsessional reactions.

The term includes most of the cases formerly classed as "psychopathic personality with pathologic sexuality". The diagnosis will specify the type of the pathologic behavior, such as homosexuality, transvestism, pedophilia, fetishism and sexual sadism (including rape, sexual assault, mutilation). p38-9.

That is all. No details about Homosexuality or Transvestism.

There is no mention of Transsexualism at all - presumably transsexuals were regarded as a type of either Homosexuality or Transvestism.


DSM II, 1968 - Transvestism 136 pages

No significant change, but now recategorized:

V. Personality Disorders and Certain Other Non-Psychotic Mental Disorders

301 Personality disorders

302 Sexual Deviations

.0 Homosexuality

.1 Fetishism

.2 Pedophilia

.3 Transvestitism

.4 Exhibitionism

.5 Voyeurism

.6 Sadism

.7 Masochism

.8 Other sexual deviation

.9 Unspecified sexual deviation

303 Alcoholism

304 Drug Dependence

See p10, 44, 79

Gays and lesbians certainly objected to being bundled into this list and were agitating that the word ‘homosexuality’ be removed. This was supported by enough psychiatrists, psychologists and psychoanalysts in the younger generation, some of whom were part of the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s that had a wider criticism of what psychiatry had become. Homosexuality was a major topic at the 1971, 1972 and 1973 annual APA meetings. Robert Spitzer, who chaired a subcommittee looking into the issue, “reviewed the characteristics of the various mental disorders and concluded that, with the exception of homosexuality and perhaps some of the other ‘sexual deviations’, they all regularly caused subjective distress or were associated with generalized impairment in social effectiveness or functioning”. Having arrived at this novel definition of mental disorder, the Nomenclature Committee agreed that homosexuality per se was not one.

Several other APA committees and deliberative bodies then reviewed and accepted their work and recommendations. As a result, in December 1973, APA’s Board of Trustees voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM. Some psychiatrists, mainly from the psychoanalytic community, however, objected to the decision. They petitioned APA to hold a referendum asking the entire membership to vote either in support of or against the decision. The decision to remove was upheld by a 58% majority of 10,000 voting members.

A revision of DSM-II removed Homosexuality, but brought in a new diagnosis: Sexual Orientation Disturbance (SOD) for those who wanted to change.



DSM III, 1980 507 pages – Transsexuality as Gender Identity Disorder

DSM Task Force on PSYCHOSEXUAL DISORDERS

Anke A. Ehrhardt, Diane S. Fordney-Settlage, Richard Friedman, Paul Gebhard, Richard Green, Helen S. Kaplan, Judith B. Kuriansky, Harold I. Lief, Jon K. Meyer, John Money, Ethel Person, Lawrence Sharpe, Robert L. Spitzer, Robert J. Stoller, Arthur Zitrin.


Homosexuality had been removed. Its replacement Sexual Orientation Disturbance (SOD) (where the patient wishes to be cured) was renamed Ego-Dystonic Homosexuality.

In compensation transsexualism is added in for the first time, and given the same 302 code as the Paraphilias.

For the first time the term ‘cross-dressing’ is used. It is used for both Transsexualism and Transvestism.

The section number 302 is renamed *Psychosexual Disorders*

The first of these is 

Gender identity disorders: p261-266

302.5x Transsexualism

302.60 Gender identity disorder of childhood

302.85 Atypical gender identity disorder

“Differential diagnosis. In effeminate homosexuality the individual displays behaviors characteristic of the opposite sex. However, such individuals have no desire to be of the other anatomic sex. In physical intersex the individual may have a disturbance in gender identity. However, the presence of abnormal sexual structures rules out the diagnosis of Transsexualism.

Other individuals with a disturbed gender identity may, in isolated periods of stress, wish to belong to the other sex and to be rid of their own genitals. In such cases the diagnosis Atypical Gender Identity Disorder should be considered, since the diagnosis of Transsexualism is made only when the disturbance has been continuous for at least two years. In Schizophrenia, there may be delusions of belonging to the other sex, but this is rare. The insistence by an indi- vidual with Transsexualism that he or she is of the other sex is, strictly speaking, not a delusion since what is invariably meant is that the individual feels like a member of the other sex rather than a true belief that he or she is a member of the other sex.”

Note that Transsexualism and Intersex are regarded as mutually exclusive categories.

The term Gender Identity Disorder (GID) was thereafter treated as a thing by many writers, mainly as a synonym for transsexualism - although GID of childhood could have been likewise treated.

The following five criteria are given for identifying a transsexual: a) Sense of discomfort and inappropriateness about one's anatomical sex. b) Wish to be rid of one's own genitals and to live as a member of the other sex. c) The disturbance has been continuous (not limited to periods of stress) for at least two years. d) Absence of physical intersex or genetic abnormality. e) Not due to another mental disorder, such as schizophrenia.' The 'x' at the end of the category code is to record prior sexual history: 1=asexual, 2=homosexual (same anatomical sex), 3=heterosexual (other anatomical sex), 0=unspecified.

Transsexualism prevalence is specified as “Apparently rare”

Children diagnosed at this time with “Gender identity disorder of childhood” were more gender non-conforming (GNC) than pre-transsexual. In practice, as would be shown in Richard Green’s The Sissy Boy Syndrome, in 1987, they were most likely to grow up to be gay. So this was in effect another residual gay category.

The Term ‘Paraphilia” to replace ‘Sexual Deviation” is introduced of which nine are listed, all with a 302 code. While Homosexuality is no longer listed, Transvestism and Fetishism remain and are discussed rather than just listed.

Fetishism (non-transvestic) has a diagnostic criterion: “The fetish objects are not limited to articles of female clothing used in cross-dressing (as in Transvestic Fetishism) or devices designed for the purpose of tactile genital stimulation (e.g., a vibrator).”

The Diagnostic Criteria for *302.30 Transvestism* (p269-270) are given as:

A. Recurrent and persistent cross-dressing by a *heterosexual male*.

B. Use of cross-dressing for the purpose of sexual excitement, at least initially in the course of the disorder.

C. Intense frustration when the cross-dressing is interfered with.

D. Does not meet the criteria for Transsexualism.



DSM III-R, 1987 598 pages

Subcommitte on Gender Identity Disorders

Anke Ehrhardt, Ethel Person, David McWhirter, Robert L. Spitzer, Heino Meyer-Bahlburg, Janet B. W. Williams, John Money, Kenneth J. Zucker.

Subcommittee on Paraphilias

Gene Abel, David Barlow, Judith Becker, Fred Berlin, Park Elliott Dietz, Raymond A. Knight, Vernon Quinsey, Robert L. Spitzer, Janet B. W. Williams.


Ego-Dystonic Homosexuality was removed. It was obvious to psychiatrists that it was the result of earlier political compromises and that EDH did not meet the definition of a disorder in the new nosology. What about people who were ego-dystonic about their race or their height or their job?

A new section, Gender Identity Disorders in introduced separated from the Sexual Disorders section 300 pages later. However both sections continue to share the 302 code.

Gender Identity Disorders (p71-78) 

is now divided into:

302.60 Gender identity disorder of childhood

302.50 Transsexualism

302.85 Gender identity disorder of adolescence or adulthood, nontranssexual type (GIDAANT)

302.85 Gender identity disorder not otherwise specified.

Transsexualism is defined as:

A. Persistent discomfort and sense of inappropriateness about one’s assigned sex.

B. Persistent preoccupation for at least two years, with getting rid of one’s primary and secondary sex characteristics and acquiring the sex characteristics of the other sex.

C. The person has reached puberty.

Prevalence: “The estimated prevalence is one per 30,000 for males and one per 100,000 for females”. These prevalences were widely cited at the time, and occasionally are still repeated in the 2020s despite much evidence of greater frequency.

GIDAANT is defined as:

A. Persistent or recurrent discomfort and sense of inappropriateness about one's assigned sex. B. Persistent or recurrent cross-dressing in the role of the other sex, either in fantasy or actuality, but not for the purpose of sexual excitement (as in Transvestic Fetishism). C. No persistent preoccupation (for at least two years) with getting rid of one's primary and secondary sex characteristics and acquiring the sex characteristics of the other sex (as in Transsexualism). D. The person has reached puberty.

Gender identity disorder not otherwise specified is defined by examples:

(1) children with persistent cross-dressing without the other criteria for Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood (2) adults with transient, stress-related cross-dressing behavior (3) adults with the clinical features of Transsexualism of less than two years' duration (4) people who have a persistent preoccupation with castration or peotomy without a desire to acquire the sex characteristics of the other sex

Sexual Disorders: Paraphilias

Transvestism is renamed 302.30 Transvestic Fetishism (p288-289) , and is defined as:

A. Over a period of at least six months, in a heterosexual male, recurrent intense sexual urges and sexually arousing fantasies involving cross-dressing. B. The person has acted on these urges, or is markedly distressed by them. C. Does not meet the criteria for Gender Identity Disorder of Adolescence or Adulthood, Nontranssexual Type, or Transsexualism.



DSM IV, 1994 915 pages – Gender Identity Disorder

DSM Work Group for Sexual Disorders

Chester W. Schmidt, chairperson, Raul Schiavi, Leslie Schover, Taylor Seagraves, Thomas Nathan Wise


302 Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders have now been recombined. Sexual Disfunctions is followed by Paraphilias is followed by Gender Identity Disorders. The Term ‘transsexualism’ is no longer used. The Term Gender Identity Disorder now subsumes three DSM-III-R diagnoses: Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood; Gender Identity Disorder of Adolescence or Adulthood, Nontranssexual Type (GIDAANT); and Transsexualism.


302.3 Transvestic Fetishism: (p530-531)

A. Over a period of at least 6 months, in a heterosexual male, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving cross-dressing. B. The fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

Specify if: With Gender Dysphoria: if the person has persistent discomfort with gender role or identity.

Gender Identity Disorder: (p532-538)

302.6 Gender Identity Disorder in Children 302.85 Gender Identity Disorder in Adolescents or Adults

302.6 Gender Identity Disorder Not Otherwise Specified

A. A strong and persistent cross-gender identification (not merely a desire for any perceived cultural advantages of being the other sex).

In children, the disturbance is manifested by four (or more) of the following: 

(1) repeatedly stated desire to be, or insistence that he or she is, the other sex 

(2) in boys, preference for cross-dressing or simulating female attire; in girls, insistence on wearing only stereotypical masculine clothing 

(3) strong and persistent preferences for cross-sex roles in make-believe play or persistent fantasies of being the other sex 

(4) intense desire to participate in the stereotypical games and pastimes of the other sex

(5) strong preference for playmates of the other sex

In adolescents and adults, the disturbance is manifested by symptoms such as a stated desire to be the other sex, frequent passing as the other sex, desire to live or be treated as the other sex, or the conviction that he or she has the typical feelings and reactions of the other sex.

B. Persistent discomfort with his or her sex or sense of inappropriateness in the gender role of that sex.

In children, the disturbance is manifested by any of the following: in boys, assertion that his penis or testes are disgusting or will disappear or assertion that it would be better not to have a penis, or aversion toward rough-and-tumble play and rejection of male stereotypical toys, games, and activities; in girls, rejection of urinating in a sitting position, assertion that she has or will grow a penis, or assertion that she does not want to grow breasts or menstruate, or marked aversion toward normative feminine clothing.

In adolescents and adults, the disturbance is manifested by symptoms such as preoccupation with getting rid of primary and secondary sex characteristics (e. g., request for hormones, surgery, or other procedures to physically alter sexual characteristics to simulate the other sex) or belief that he or she was born the wrong sex.

C. The disturbance is not concurrent with a physical intersex condition.

D. The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

Code based on current age: 302.6 Gender Identity Disorder in Children 302.85 Gender Identity Disorder in Adolescents or Adults

302.6 Gender Identity Disorder Not Otherwise Specified

This category is included for coding disorders in gender identity that are not classifiable as a specific Gender Identity Disorder. Examples include

  1. Intersex conditions (e.g., androgen insensitivity syndrome or congenital adrenal hyperplasia) and accompanying gender dysphoria

  2. Transient, stress-related cross-dressing behavior

  3. Persistent preoccupation with castration or penectomy without a desire to acquire the sex characteristics of the other sex




DSM-IV-TR 2000 955 pages

DSM Work Group for Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders

Chester W. Schmidt, R. Taylor Segraves, Thomas Nathan Wise, Kenneth J. Zucker .


As in DSM-IV, sex and gender are grouped together. Sexual Disfunctions is followed by Paraphilias is followed by Gender Identity Disorders.

No significant difference from DSM-IV.




DSM-V, 2013 991 pages- Gender Dysphoria

DSM Work Group for Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders:

Kenneth J. Zucker, Chair, Lori Brotto, Text Coordinator, Martin P. Kafka, Irving M. Binik, Richard B. Krueger, Ray M. Blanchard, Niklas Langström, Peggy T. Cohen-Kettenis, Heino F.L. Meyer-Bahlburg, Jack Drescher, Friedemann Pfäfflin, Cynthia A. Graham, Robert Taylor Segraves.


As in DSM-3-R, Gender Dysphoria and the Paraphilic Disorders are separated again (by over 200 pages).

Gender Identity Disorder (GID) is replaced by Gender Dysphoria in Adolescents and Adults, which is defined as distress related to the incongruence between assigned gender and gender identity. Gender Dysphoria in Children has more stringent requirements with behavioural criteria. These two were moved to their own section to retain access to insurance coverage rather than being removed . The new term “is more descriptive than the previous DSM-IV term gender identity disor­der and focuses on dysphoria as the clinical problem, not identity per se.”

Transvestic Fetishism has been renamed as Transvestic Disorder; Intersex has been replaced by the contentious term Disorders of Sex Development, thereby introducing another term using ‘disorder’ as it removes the term GID.

Gender Dysphoria (p451-459)

302.85 Gender Dysphoria in Adolescents and Adults

A. A marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender, of at least 6 months’ duration, as manifested by at least two of the following:

  1. A marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and pri­mary and/or secondary sex characteristics (or in young adolescents, the antici­pated secondary sex characteristics).

  2. A strong desire to be rid of one’s primary and/or secondary sex characteristics be­cause of a marked incongruence with one’s experienced/expressed gender (or in young adolescents, a desire to prevent the development of the anticipated second­ary sex characteristics).

  3. A strong desire for the primary and/or secondary sex characteristics of the other gender.

  4. A strong desire to be of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender).

  5. A strong desire to be treated as the other gender (or some alternative gender dif­ferent from one’s assigned gender).

  6. A strong conviction that one has the typical feelings and reactions of the other gen­der (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender).

B. The condition is associated with clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

While in earlier versions of the DSM, one did not have GID if one were physically intersex, now the physician is merely to specify if:

“With a disorder of sex development (e.g., a congenital adrenogenital disorder such as 255.2 [E25.0] congenital adrenal hyperplasia or 259.50 [E34.50] androgen insensitivity syndrome).”

302.6 Gender Dysphoria in Children

Is very similar except that there are 8 items under A. and at least 6 must be manifested by the child.

302.3 Transvestic Disorder (p701-704)

“ Transvestic disorder occurs in heterosexual (or bisexual) adoles­cent and adult males (rarely in females) for whom cross-dressing behavior generates sex­ual excitement and causes distress and/or impairment without drawing their primary gender into question. It is occasionally accompanied by gender dysphoria. An individual with transvestic disorder who also has clinically significant gender dysphoria can be given both diagnoses. In many cases of late-onset gender dysphoria in gynephilic natal males, transvestic behavior with sexual excitement is a precursor.”

Defined as:

A. Over a period of at least 6 months, recurrent and intense sexual arousal from cross­-dressing, as manifested by fantasies, urges, or behaviors. B. The fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors cause clinically significant distress or impair­ment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

It is noted: “The presence of fetishism decreases the likelihood of gender dysphoria in men with trans­vestic disorder. The presence of autogynephilia increases the likelihood of gender dyspho­ria in men with transvestic disorder.” and “Transvestic disorder in men is often accompanied by autogynephilia (i.e., a male's paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman). Autogynephilic fantasies and behaviors may focus on the idea of exhibiting female phys­iological functions (e.g., lactation, menstruation), engaging in stereotypically feminine be­havior (e.g., knitting), or possessing female anatomy (e.g., breasts).”

Prevalence: “The prevalence of transvestic disorder is unknown. Transvestic disorder is rare in males and extremely rare in females. Fewer than 3% of males report having ever been sexually aroused by dressing in women's attire. The percentage of individuals who have cross­-dressed with sexual arousal more than once or a few times in their lifetimes would be even lower. The majority of males with transvestic disorder identify as heterosexual, although some individuals have occasional sexual interaction with other males, especially when they are cross-dressed.”

Given the DSM definition of Transvestic Disorder, this estimate of Prevalence may be too high, but of course if we consider all types of cross-dressing, it is too low.



———————————

  • Dylan Scholinski. The Last Time I Wore a Dress. Riverhead, 1998.

  • Kelley Winters. Gender Madness in American Psychiatry: Essays from the struggle for Dignity. GIDReform.org, 2008.

  • Susan Cooke. “Why GID Must Be Removed From the DSM”. Women Born Transsexual, September 2, 2009. Online.

  • Cristan Williams. Disco Sexology. Online.

  • Jack Molay. “On how American psychiatry persecutes transgender crossdreamers and crossdressers”. Crossdreamers, October 24, 2012. Online.

  • Jack Drescher. "Out of DSM: Depathologizing Homosexuality”. Behavioral Sciences, 5, 4, 2015. Online.

26 June 2022

The DSM - Part I: history of the APA

Part I: history of the APA 
Part III: comments

This is about the American Psychiatric Association (APA), not to be confused with the American Psychological Association (APA), the American Philological Association (APA) or the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA).

The Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane, also known as The Superintendents' Association, was organized in Philadelphia in October, 1844 at a meeting of 13 superintendents, making it the first professional medical speciality organization in the U.S. What became its organ, The American Journal of Insanity (AJI) was also first published in June 1844 by the Utica State Hospital. It was officially acquired by the Association in 1892.

The American Medical Association was organised in in 1847, and in 1854 established a Committee on Insanity which lasted until 1867 when a psychology section was organised. Merger of the AMA and the Superintendents Association was discussed over the years but never happened.

In 1875 the American Neurological Association was formed mainly bringing together physicians who had treated brain-damaged soldiers in the US civil war. Many neurologists distrusted the Medical Superintendents, thought that the asylums were mismanaged, and in some states called on the legislature to investigate the asylums.

The Association of Medical Superintendents changed its name in 1892 to the American Medico-Psychological Association. In 1894, for its 50th anniversary, the the American Medico-Psychological Association invited Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, a prominent Philadelphia neurologist to address the annual meeting. After querying a number of his colleagues, Dr. Mitchell delivered a scathing address to the superintendents. He said that they had isolated themselves from medicine and they sought no new scientific information through their work, their medical records were inadequate, and their educational efforts among the profession were minimal. The superintendents made little reply to the address.

The American Medico-Psychological Association again changed its name in 1921 to the present name, American Psychiatric Association (APA). In the same year the American Journal of Insanity** was renamed The American Journal of Psychiatry.

In 1917 they developed a new guide for mental hospitals called The Statistical Manual for the Use of Institutions for the Insane. This guide included twenty-two diagnoses. This evolved into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) from 1952 onwards and which the APA continues to maintain. It has a core use for billing within the US medical insurance system, but has become the authoritative list of mental disorders which controversially once did include homosexuality, and still does include trans conditions. This organization has laid down rules as to what constitutes a transvestite, a transsexual etc. These are to be found in its DSMs.

The DSM has become a manual of mental conditions, and is used more widely, even outside the US, and as such is regarded by some as a reification of socially disapproved thoughts and behaviours as disorders.



  • "Diseases of the Mind: Highlights in American Psychiatry Through 1900". US National Library of Medicine. Online.

EN.Wikipedia(American Psychiatric Association, Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane)

13 December 2018

Richard Green, John Randell and ....


See also  John Randell (1918 – 1982) Psychiatrist.


In Richard Green's new book

  • Gay Rights, Trans Rights: A psychiatrist/lawyer's 50-year battle.  2018.

we find on p 154: 

"Randell was a careful clinician who assessed nearly as many gender dysphoric patients as Harry Benjamin.  John became a friend in my 1966 London fellowship year.  He had a home and family in North London.   But he also had a flat in Central London.  One evening, as we were preparing to go out for drinks and dinner at his club, he went to the wardrobe to get his coat.  There were many dresses on hangers.  'A woman stays here sometimes' he explained.  I thought he had a mistress.  I did not realize that they were his dresses."


Indeed!



17 June 2017

Ethel Person (1934-2012) psychoanalyst: Part I Life

Part I: Life
Part II: theory

Unless otherwise noted, page references are to The Sexual Century.

Ethel Jane Spector was raised in Louisville, Kentucky. Her mother was a mathematician, and her father owned a bar. He died when she was twelve. She completed a first degree at the University of Chicago in 1956, and then a medical degree at the New York University College of Medicine four years later. She became Mrs Person when she wed an engineer. The marriage ended after ten years, although she kept his name for her professional life. She married her second husband, a psychiatrist, in 1968, and became Mrs Sherman.

Soon after joining the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, Person was invited to work with Lionel Ovesey (1915-1995), the author of The Mark of Oppression: A Psychosocial Study of the American Negro, 1951, and Homosexuality and pseudohomosexuality, 1969. His concept of ‘pseudohomosexuality’ concerned `homosexual anxieties' in heterosexual males who were concerned about dependency and lack of power. Ovesey was one of the psychiatrists strongly opposed to the delisting of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1973.

Ovesey’s proposal was that he and Person would write a textbook on sex and gender. They quickly realized that neither of them had any experience with transvestites or transsexuals. An acquaintance in the psychoanalytical world was Harold Greenwald, the founder of the Professional School for Humanistic Studies (where Anne Vitale qualified as a psychologist). Greenwald introduced Person to the then 88-year-old Harry Benjamin and his assistant Charles Ihlenfeld in 1972. She spent time in Benjamin’s office interviewing some of his patients.
“The work that I did with Lionel would have been well nigh impossible without the cooperation of Harry Benjamin, who was hospitable to me despite his major bias against psychoanalysts. In fact we became great friends.” (p xiii)
Indeed Benjamin asked her to write a biographical portrait of him to be published after his death. She formally interviewed him to this end a dozen times.

One person that Person met at Benjamin’s offices was Ed/Edna, 60, a retired tugboat captain who had become the superintendent of a rental building. He fell in love with Clair, one of his tenants, a completed transsexual. He detransitioned to become her lover, and was devastated when she left him for a truck driver. To cope with the resulting depression, Edna restarted hormones and dressing full-time. Again he rented to a completed trans woman, Janet. Again he reverted to male, and became her lover. After Ed’s original wife died, he married Janet, and lived happily with her until she also died ten years later. He was then 85. (By Force of Fantasy p 131-4)

Edna subscribed to Transvestia magazine, and through that discovered transvestite social groups. Edna introduced Person to these socials: “it was at these events that I gained some of my deeper insights into the subjective meaning to transvestites of their participation in that world”. Person and Ovesey also sought confirmation for their work by visiting pornography shops and reading trans publications.

Person and Ovesey proposed a typology of trans persons assuming that a child's separation-individuation anxiety produced a fantasy of symbiotic fusion with the mother which the transsexual tries to resolve by surgically becoming her mother.  Papers to this effect were published 1973-85. (See part II for details).

One of the transsexuals included in the Person-Ovesey study was Elizabeth – author of the Notes from the T Side blog. She writes:

Harry Benjamin “in 1970 -71 asked me to talk to a Dr. Ethel Person as part of a study and I agreed although I am inherently distrustful of shrinks but I found her pleasant and quite nice and we became friendly. When the study was published I was stunned to be honest. I was part of the study and I knew two others who were part of it and friends of mine. We never talked about anything mentioned in the study directly. We talked about our lives as children until the current time and at the time I was 24 and had close to enough money for surgery. In point of fact Harry might have been more upset by the study than anyone. I am posting this to refute what they found because as one of the participants in the study I walked into her office and asked her where I fit in late 1974 and she said Secondary because I liked boys so I was a homosexual transsexual where by Harry's definition I was a Type VI high intensity transsexual and according to Harry the study was bogus.”
Ethel Person’s second husband died in 1976. She married a lawyer in 1978 and became Mrs Diamond. 


Person was director of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research 1981-91. She did an “epidemiological study of sexual fantasy” which she contrasted to Alfred Kinsey’s study of sexual acts.

Her best known book is By Force of Fantasy: How We Make Our Lives, 1995, where she argues that we shape our lives by trying consciously or otherwise to live out our fantasies.

In 1987 Person had paired the film critic Molly Haskell with an appropriate analyst, and became a friend. In 2005 when Haskell’s sibling was starting transition, she spoke to Person about the situation. Apparently Person said nothing to her about primary or secondary or separation anxiety. Only: “Transsexuals are the best, the kindest people I know, maybe because they have to learn compassion the hard way” and “He longs for validation,” Ethel spoke of transsexualism as being “a passion of the soul”. Later in Haskell’s book, Person is quoted: “The worst thing about it is you discover you don’t know the person you thought you knew.”

In 1997 Person gave a presentation to the International Psychoanalytic Association Congress in Barcelona on her life of Harry Benjamin, and used it to illustrate the origin of shared cultural fantasy. In 1999 she collected her works on sex and gender, including her biography of Harry Benjamin, and published them as The Sexual Century.

Person’s third husband died in 2009. Ethel Jane Spector Person Sherman Diamond, her final name, incorporating the surnames of all three husbands, died at age 77 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease.

06 August 2016

Ira B Pauly (1930–) psychiatrist, sex-change doctor

(All quotations from Anderson 2015, unless otherwise specified).

Ira’s father was a successful bookmaker who raised his three sons and a daughter in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. Ira was the youngest, and the first in the family to go to university. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1953. He was a noted rugby and US football player. In the latter, he was on the UCLA winning team of 1953, and Pauly was the B’nai B’rith 1953 Los Angeles Jewish Collegiate Athlete of the Year.
 “I applied to medical school. And even though my, I had a pretty good GPA, probably 3.4, 3.5. But the guys that were getting in had 3.8 and 4.0s. But you know, because by then I had become known as a football player, I was the first one to get accepted at UCLA, I was told. So that didn’t hurt. They were looking for people who were so-called well-rounded.“ (Interview with Maija Anderson p2)
He graduated from the UCLA School of Medicine in 1958. After doing a surgical internship at UCLA, he was accepted for a psychiatric residency at Cornell Medical Center in New York. He married in 1960, and he and his wife had four sons.

In 1961 he was doing a rotation in the consultation service when he was called to urology to counsel a trans man who was in for a hysterectomy. He attempted research in the hospital library but found material on transsexualism only in French and German. He had patients who were willing to do longhand translations for him.

He then discovered a paper by Cauldwell.
“And then there was a brief article by someone named Harry Benjamin. And in those days, it was in a somewhat obscure journal. I don’t quite remember which journal it was. But it had his address. And it was an address that was about five blocks away from the hospital that I was working at. So I looked up his name in the phone book and told him that I was a psychiatry resident, and I had a little experience with a transgender, transsexual patient. And was there any way I could come over and talk to him, because I had read—he was an endocrinologist. And a lot of these folks, the first step in the physical transition is taking the contrary hormone.” (Interview with Maija Anderson p6)
For much of that year, he attended Benjamin's Wednesday afternoon clinic.
 “So every Wednesday afternoon, through the generosity and mentorship of Harry Benjamin, I was able to see probably more transsexual patients than any psychiatrist in North America. … As I got to know the patients, they uniformly described being happier into the gender role that they felt they were in from the very beginning. And that the only thing that needed to be done as far as treatment was concerned was to get the body on board with the gender of their choice.“ (Interview with Maija Anderson p6)
Pauly set out to aggregate 100 cases from the literature and from among Benjamin’s patients.

He had been in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) at UCLA and would normally have done military service at the end of his education, but he had developed glaucoma, and the army no longer wanted him. In 1962 he obtained a position at the University of Oregon Medical School.

He completed "Male Psychosexual Inversion: Transsexualism. A Review of 100 Cases" in 1963, but it was not published until 1965. He concluded that that gender surgery had positive results and that trans patients should be supported by medical professionals in their quest to live as the gender of their identity. He then received a thousand requests from doctors around the world for offprints of his article. It also resulted in a job interview at Johns Hopkins, but Oregon doubled his salary to keep him.

++His presentation at the American Psychiatric Association in 1964 led to a sensationalized article in the National Insider that while quoting him that the desire to change is found in childhood, it then blames alcoholic fathers who punished their children, and that "It apparently gave them a reason to escape from responsibility and from being a man".

However, Harry Benjamin, in his 1966 The Transsexual Phenomenon, quotes Pauly as saying:
“Because of his isolation, the transsexual has not developed interpersonal skills, and frequently presents the picture of a schizoid or inadequate personality.” (p71-2/33).
Speaking to the American Psychiatric Association in May 1964, Pauly said:
“The transsexual attempts to deny and reverse his biological sex and pass into and maintain the opposite gender role identification. Claims of organic or genetic etiology have not been substantiated. … Although psychosis is not frequent in the schizophrenic sense, in its most extreme form, transsexualism can be interpreted as an unusual paranoid state, characterized by a well-circumscribed delusional system in which the individual attempts to deny the physical reality of his body. The term Paranoia Transsexualis has been suggested as an appropriate descriptive term for this syndrome. Psychosexual inversion is seen as a spectrum of disorders, from mild effeminacy to homosexuality, transvestism, and finally transsexualism, each representing a more extreme form, and often including the previous manifestation.” (quoted in Benjamin, 162-3/76)
He proposed the term ‘pseudotranssexual’ for those who sought transition to justify their
homosexuality.

He was one of the first doctors to point out that transsexuals tell the doctor what he wants to hear. He called them “unreliable historians”. (Benjamin, 164/76)

Pauly also saw private patients.
“But these folks were, among other things, very grateful because they had great difficulty getting a physician to empathize with their situation, let alone treat them. And prescribe hormones and refer them to the surgeon for surgery. So the word got around. So I probably treated everybody in the Portland area on a one-to-one basis.” (p12)
Oregon had no surgeon performing transgender surgery, so at first patients were referred to San Francisco, and then to Dr Biber in Trinidad, Colorado. Pauly did his own endocrinology prescriptions. In that period he also attempted to treat gay persons wishing to become heterosexual.
“And there was the occasional transgender person that wanted to go back to accept himself in the gender role that was consistent with what his body said. And some of us tried to help out in that regard. But I personally tried to do that with a couple of patients. And the only thing I really accomplished was to kind of push them into a psychosis. So that, by trial and error, I learned that I certainly didn’t have the ability to help them with that problem.” (p19)
In 1969 he contributed two papers to Green & Money’s Transsexualism and Sex-Reassignment, one on trans women, one on trans men; each includes four case studies, and an overview.

Paul McHugh, who would close down the gender identity clinic at Johns Hopkins after 1975, was dean of the University of Oregon Medical School until 1975.

In 1975 Pauly’s student Thomas Lindgren, wanting something more objective than a patient’s self-history, developed a body-image scale where patient’s rated how they felt about different parts of their body. Not surprisingly pre-op transsexuals rated their genitals worse than their arms or legs. However it was also used for anorexia and other conditions, including those wanting homeogender surgery.

In 1978 Pauly became chair of the University of Nevada Medical School. He was a founding member of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, (now WPATH) in 1979, and served as president of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association from 1985 to 1987.

In the late 1980s, Louis Sullivan was lobbying the American Psychiatric Association and the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association and the gender identity clinics to recognize the existence of gay trans men. Pauly was one of the few psychiatrists to respond, and made a three-hour video interview with him.

Pauly retired in 1995, did sabbatical work in New Zealand, and returned to work in the state hospital in Reno, Nevada and became medical director for the Northern Nevada Adult Mental Health Service.

In 2004, Pauly was inducted into the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

He retired again in 2010.
  • Ira B Pauly. "Female Psychosexual Inversion: Transsexualism. Read before the American Psychiatric Ass., St. Louis, May 1963.
  • Arnold Wells. “Exclusive! MD Reveals The Fourth Sex! Not Male, Not Female, And Not Homosexual”. The National Insider, 5, 3, July 19, 1964. Online.
  • Ira B Pauly. "Male Psychosexual Inversion: Transsexualism. A Review of 100 Cases". Archives of General Psychology, 13, 1965:172-181.
  • Ira B Pauly. “The current status of the change of sex operation”. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Nov;147, 5, 1968:460-71.
  • Ira B Pauly. “Female Transsexualism”. Archives of Sexual Behavior,3, 1974:487-526.
  • Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Julian Press, 1966. Warner Books Edition 1977, with a bibliography and appendix by Richard Green.  PDF (with different pagination): 71-2/33, 162-3/76, 164/76, 179/84, 181/84.
  • Ira B Pauly. “Adult Manifestations of Male Transsexualism” and “Adult Manifestations of Female Transsexualism”. In Richard Green & John Money (ed). Transsexualism and Sex-Reassignment. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1969: 37-87.
  • Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press, 2002: 123, 124, 125, 174.
  • Amy Bloom. Normal: Transsexual CEO's, Cross-Dressing Cops, Hermaphrodites with Attitude, and More. Vintage, 2014: 18-22.
  • Maija Anderson. Interview with Ira B. Pauly, MD. Oregon Health & Science University, Oral History program, Februray 18, 2015. Online
TSRoadmap
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For some reason Harry Benjamin calls Pauly “Ira S Pauly”. 

The EN.Wikipedia article is almost the same as the TSRoadmap article.

At the end of Maija Anderson’s interview, Pauly is asked what he thinks about Alan Hart, the famous trans doctor from Portland, Oregon, who transitioned in 1917. Despite having lived in Portland for 16 years where Hart is remembered, he replies: “No. I wish I had seen that. Where was it published again”, and then “And as far as I knew, the first published female to male, as we referred to it, was the patient I described in the New York Hospital”. Obviously he does not spend much time reading trans history.







08 May 2016

Herbert Bower (1914 – 2004) psychiatrist, sex change doctor

Herbert Bower, the only child of Jewish parents, was training as a doctor in Vienna in 1938. After the Nazi takeover, he fled to Switzerland, and completed his studies at the University of Basel, after which he and his fiancée made their way to London where they were married. They were on the last ship from London to Australia, as war broke out in September 1939.

However the Australian authorities would not recognise his medical qualifications. He worked as an orderly at Launceston General Hospital, and then did two years in the Northern Territory as a medical officer ministering to Chinese tungsten miners. The Government appreciated this and accepted him as a Swiss neutral rather than as an enemy alien. His parents died in the Theresenstadt concentration camp.

After the war, he repeated his medical training at Melbourne University. He became a psychiatrist, and encountered his first trans patient.

In 1955 Bower became the superintendent of Kew Asylum, which had many elderly patients and was appalled at the conditions, which he immediately set about improving.

By then he had fallen in love with another woman. They both divorced their spouses, and married in 1956.

Bower introduced the concept of ‘successful aging’, and in 1963 gave two influential lectures at the University of Melbourne on the topic.

In 1965 he suffered a heart attack, and resigned the superintendency, but continued as a consultant with the Mental Health Authority of Victoria. He also began teaching, and in 1970 became director of post-graduate studies at Melbourne University. In 1972 he called, but without much support, for psychiatrists to have a role in assessing the fitness of politicians. He was influenced by Herbert Marcuse, and engaged with feminism and the anti-psychiatry movement.

In 1974 at age 60 Bower, with Trudy Kennedy, approached the Queen Victoria Hospital with the idea of a gender dysphoria clinic. A team was created that eventually included a second psychiatrist, an endocrinologist, a speech therapist, a gynaecologist and a plastic surgeon. The first transgender surgery was performed there the next year. The clinic was later moved to Monash Medical Centre.

From 1975 Bower was technically retired, but continued to teach, consulted as a psychogeriatrician and saw an increasing number of trans patients. His second wife died from cancer in 1980, and later that year he suffered anginal attacks and had triple bypass surgery. He recovered and took a third life partner.

His work led to a Unit for Old Age Psychiatry at the Melbourne Clinic. At the gender dysphoria clinic he began co-ordinating a research project to establish possible genetic origins.

In 2004 a Melbourne patient who started on a change to male, but then reverted and later had three children attempted to sue the Gender Dysphoria Clinic for malpractice. This resulted in an independent review ordered by the State Government. Bower observed “If our team erred twice in 29 years, and during that period we operated, not saw, because many more - but we operated on 600 patients, two errors in 600 is, I think, in any area of human endeavour, is acceptable”.

He died later that year at age 90.

Two other ex-patients including Alan Finch also took legal action. Dr Trudy Kennedy was obliged to resign, and the Clinic was closed until 2009.  Various fundamental Christian groups and Alan Finch’s Gender Identity Awareness Association lobbied against the Clinic’s reopening.
  • Herbert M. Bower. ‘Old age in western society’, Lectures 1 and 2, Medical Journal of Australia, 2, 8, 1964: 285-291; 2,8,1964: 325-332.
  • Herbert M. Bower. ‘Psychiatry and Political Thought’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 6,3, 1972: 191–6.
  • H. M. Bower. “Liberation and Psychiatry—Towards a reconciliation”. In N. McConaghy (ed.), Liberation Movements and Psychiatry, Ciba-Geigy Australia, 1974: 125–8.
  • Herbert M. Bower. ‘Diagnosis and Differential Diagnosis’, in Walters, W. and Ross, M. (eds), Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, Oxford University Press: 1986.
  • Herbert Bower. "The Concentration Camp Syndrome". The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry : Official Organ of the Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. 28, 3, 1994: 391-397.
  • Herbert Bower. "Psychogenic Trauma and Transient Psychosis". European Psychiatry: Supplement 4. 11, 1996: 294s-294s.
  • Herbert Bower. "The Gender Identity Disorder in the DSM-IV Classification: a Critical Evaluation". Australasian Psychiatry. 35, 1, 2001: 1-8.
  • “Concerns raised over sex change clinic”. Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 06/05/2004. Transcript
  • Stephen Pincock. “Herbert Bower”. The Lancet, 364, October 16, 2004. PDF
  • “Dr Herbert Bower – Psychiatrist – 19/12/1914-29/8/2004”. Australasian Psychiatry, 12, 4, December 2004: 430-2. First Page
  • Cecily Hunter. “The concept of successful ageing: A contribution to a history of old age in modern Australia”. History Australia, 5, 2,2008: 42.1 – 42.15. PDF.
  • Jill Stark. “Sex-change clinic 'got it wrong'“. The Age, May 31, 2009. www.smh.com.au/national/sexchange-clinic-got-it-wrong-20090530-br3u.html.
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Both the Lancet and the Australasian Psychiatry obituaries say nothing at all about the controversy that flared up just before Dr Bower died.

Like Harry Benjamin, Bower became interested in trans patients in his 60s and was also interested in gerontology.

Bower's comment that 2 errors out of 600+ as 'acceptable'  may sound callous, but it is very good statistics compared to other branches of medicine.