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During the last twenty years the condition known as “transsexualism” has attracted increasing interest by investigators in the fields of psychiatry, endocrinology and surgery. As a result of extensive research by multidisciplinary teams on the various (psychological, biological, and sociological) aspects of this condition, a new concept, that of gender identity, has emerged in the psychiatric literature. In this paper, with due regard to the enormous data accumulated by these studies, I intend to discuss the limitations of the concept of gender identity as applied to transsexualism, and propose an alternative interpretation of the transsexual phenomenon.
An essential characteristic of the transsexual patient is his desperate seeking of surgical and other “sex change” procedures. In the male transsexual, these transformation procedures include surgical removal of the penis and testes, construction of artificial vulva and vagina, hormonal and surgical enlargement of the breast and removal of the facial and body hair. In the female transsexual, the “sex change” operation includes hysterectomy, surgical removal