Some Reflections on the Nature of Psychoanalytic Debate in Academic Publishing: A Response to Roberto D’Angelo’s: “Do we Want to Know?”

Dear Editor,

I write in relation to the recent publication of the paper by Roberto D’Angelo (2024): “Do we want to know?”. In this paper, he invites us collectively to consider the destructive currents in psychoanalytic debates about trans-identified young people. He highlights one outcome of these debates, namely that they “ … obscure or deny the psychic pain that is sometimes humming beneath the experience of gender dysphoria” (1). He further draws attention to, and illustrates, how some clinicians “ … misrepresent and attempt to discredit clinicians who explore the meaning and function of trans identification, or who express concern that transitioning may be a drastic solution to various forms of psychic pain” (1).

This paper is timely and important not only because it encourages us to critically consider how we approach the question of transgender within our discipline, but also because it provides us with a powerful illustration of a more insidious problem that arises in other contemporary debates that divide our discipline. First, I will address the specific question D’Angelo raises with respect to debates about transgender. I will then share some general reflections about how we debate. I conclude with some thoughts about the importance of protecting the integrity of academic publishing to support reasoned debate.

As a recipient of the kind of “discrediting” that D’Angelo refers to, I am familiar with the dynamic he highlights, and which has created an unhelpful climate for thinking about how to best support transgender individuals. In one important sense, the experience of the clinician charged as “transphobic” is the least of the problems we face. It’s not a comfortable position when one is on the receiving end of this, but it comes with the territory. The graver problem, as D’Angelo underlines, is that categorical positions which do not allow for the range of experiences we encounter clinically, neglect the pain reported by those transgender individuals for w