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This paper looks at systems of gender within the context of analysis. It explores the unique challenges of individuation faced by transsexual, transgender, gender queer, gender non-conforming, cross-dressing and intersex patients. To receive patients generously we need to learn how a binary culture produces profound and chronic trauma. These patients wrestle with being who they are whilst simultaneously receiving negative projections and feeling invisible. While often presenting with the struggles of gender conforming individuals, understanding the specifically gendered aspect of their identity is imperative. An analyst's unconscious bias may lead to iatrogenic shaming.
The author argues that rigorous, humble inquiry into the analyst's transphobia can be transformative for patient, analyst, and the work itself. Analysis may, then, provide gender-variant patients with their first remembered and numinous experience of authentic connection to self. Conjuring the image of a hinge, securely placed in the neutral region of a third space, creates a transpositive analytic temenos. Invoking the spirit of the Trickster in the construction of this matrix supports the full inclusion of gender-variant patients. Nuanced attunement scaffolds mirroring and the possibility of play. Being mindful that gender is sturdy and delicate as well as mercurial and defined enriches the analyst's listening.