Comment on Dr Stoller's Paper

Having followed Stoller's work on gender identity, I wish to state my conviction that Stoller has made a major contribution to our field. Most analysts have never seen a trans sexual. When such a patient is discussed with them for the first time, their reaction is invariably the same: namely, that any person who wants his sex organs removed and remodelled into those of the opposite sex must be psychotic.

It is to Stoller's credit that he now brings us the unexpected and dramatic dénouement to the case of this baffling patient whom he had presented at the two previous Congresses. In trying to understand some of the reasons why and how he and his colleagues were deceived by the unabashed brazenness of this man, I came upon one point I shall make the focus of my discussion: namely, what Stoller calls the "biological force".

Stoller states in his paper—as he had in previous ones—that a biological force is one of the factors producing the earliest stages in the development of gender identity. He adds that he does not know what produced this force which he characterizes in the following way: (i) it silently augments the developing gender identity in the normal: (ii) it can be overwhelmed by post-natal psychological experiences in certain abnormal people: and (iii) in rare cases it may be so strong as to overpower the effects of a child being reared in the wrong sex, which means that the biological force can overwhelm the postnatal psychological experiences. Thus, we get a picture in the instances (ii) and (iii) of the biological force and the psychological forces being pitted against each other with the stronger one deciding the outcome of the battle for gender identity, while in the first instance both forces work in harmony with each other.

I would have no argument with this hypothesis if the abnormal cases were limited to those of hermaphroditism of whatever sort. But I do want to state that I do not agree when Stoller applies his thesis to a patient like the o