The Male Transsexual as 'Experiment'

This paper carries further a discussion of early factors in the development of male transsexualism (Stoller, 1968), (1970a), (1971a); (Newman & Stoller, 1971). I shall consider consequences of studies with these most unusual patients on theories concerning earliest stages of infantile development in more normal and in perverse people, stressing in this regard the role of parental influences.

Let us first note the clinical picture in transsexualism. The adult transsexual male has been feminine since earliest childhood, in some cases as early as a year and in all without a phase of masculinity. By three or four he is already saying he wants to be a girl and expects he will lose his penis while his body converts entirely to female. He plays only with girls, is accepted by them (in games in which no other boys are included), and takes only female roles. Usually while still adolescent, this person has already passed successfully as a woman, never recognized to be a male. 'Her' femininity is natural, not an act or mimicry. 'She' is never sexually excited by women's clothes. In order to be accepted as a female, the patient wants 'her' body converted to female. The condition is very rare and should be differentiated from others in which patients also request 'sex change'.

Rather than my repeating material in earlier papers, let it suffice only to refer to the unusual circumstances which produce these most feminine of males. A chronically depressed, bisexual woman, who considers herself without value, marries a distant and passive man. If she gives birth to a beautiful son, she has in her arms the cure to her lifelong hopelessness. Without her husband present either to interfere or to serve as a model for the boy's masculinity, she holds her perfect child in an endless embrace. As a result the child does not adequately learn where his own body ends and hers begins, at least in regard to a sense of maleness and femaleness.

A transsexual boy of four and a half draws