The Gender Identity Service (located in
Boston, Massachusetts) is an evaluative and counseling unit designed to
provide full services including sexual reassignment to transsexuals. In that
capacity, since the spring of 1972, we have seen over 120 transsexuals.
During this time we have been impressed
with behavioral similarities between our population of transsexuals and
adolescents. This emerging observation provided impetus for the present
paper. After carefully reviewing our caseload material it is our contention
that indeed psychological, biological and sociological similarities do
exist. Through a comparison of these, we hope not only to make transsexual
behaviors more comprehensible but also to underscore the importance of the
adolescent years for the development of adult gender identity.
Using primarily an ego psychoanalytic
approach, the paper attempts to demystify the diagnosis of transsexual by
pointing to its dynamic similarities with adolescence.
Citation:
Adolescence 1984 Fall;19(75):729-48 an article published on the Internet by
PubMed
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/>
