Transsexualism: Illusion and Reality By Colette Chiland, Connecticut:  Wesleyan University Press, 2003, (Original French Version, 1997).  193 pp.

Colette Chiland, Psychiatrist-in-Chief of the Alfred-Binet Center, Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychology at the University René Descartes in Paris, and a well-known psychoanalyst, has spent many years working with transsexuals. Her book presents the conclusions she has reached regarding the challenging field of gender psychology and specifically the issue of transsexualism. She opens, stating straightforwardly:

Inherent in the transsexual contention is a contradiction that lies deep within our culture. Transsexuals say that their identity is defined not by the sex of their body but by that of their mind and soul. Yet they are not content to occupy the symbolic place of the other sex (although a so-called transgender movement, preferring gender change to sex change, has recently arisen), but require a bodily token of their change of status. This bodily token, or ‘neo-sex’, becomes the proof of the truth of their assertion that they are members of the other sex. (p. xi)

She wonders:

What does a transsexual want? What does he get from medicine? Is he ‘cured’? Is he not strengthened in his illusion? Is it possible to ‘change sex’? Would it not be better to try to change ‘what he has in his mind’? (p. 2)

Her probing of these questions leads her to the conclusion that transsexualism is unequivocally a state of disease, and one inherent to our society:

The issue of transsexualism is often ‘trivialized’, making it seem a syndrome like any other. Yet the transsexual phenomenon is surely a product of our technology-based, individualistic culture, a token of its contradictions, and a disease

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of our culture. (p. 2)

Transsexualism: Illusion or Reality is a well-researched book, covering many aspects of the transsexual phenomenon. Dr. Chiland starts by defining gender as a heterogeneous concept that subsumes at least three aspects: biological, psychological, and social sex — in addition to gender and sexual orientation, or “object choice.” Regarding the controversial issue of the