This book is an exhaustive survey of the literature of transsexualism. Colette Chiland is Psychiatrist-in-Chief at the Alfred-Binet Centre and Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychology at René Descartes University in Paris. She is the author of several books, including Homo Psychanalyticus .

Transsexualism is the state of mind which knows itself to be the sex other than the anatomical sex to which the person is born. It is not a wish to become a person of the other sex but literally the knowledge that one is already. This is different from transvestism, a desire and compulsion to assume the clothing of the opposite sex which, for men, includes sexual pleasure. Nor is it a variety of homosexuality such as effeminate homosexuality where the subject assumes feminine ways and, wishing to be a