Editor’s Response: Editor’s Response to Letters from Susan and Marcus Evans, David Bell, and Roberto D’Angelo, Concerning Avgi Saketopoulou’s Book Essay: “On Trying to Pass off Transphobia as Psychoanalysis and Cruelty as ‘Clinical Logic’”

Like homosexuality, gender dysphoria and trans phenomena have been the subject of long and contentious debate in psychoanalysis. A book review is an opinion piece, a reasoned critique of another author’s work; there is no requirement that all such opinions be matched by opinions from an opposing camp. Like any article in The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Dr. Saketopoulou’s piece does not reflect the unanimous voice of the Journal. At the same time, we feel that Saketopoulou is highly qualified to review the Evans’ book. Among her many distinctions, she has been awarded the Ralph Roughton Award and the annual JAPA Essay Prize for her paper on the treatment of a five-year-old trans girl. She is co-author of a paper awarded the First Tiresias Essay Prize from the IPA's Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies Committee; this paper, on how we may think about gender as also constituted through trauma, without falling into conversion therapy, will be published, together with one or two other pieces, in a small volume by The Unconscious in Translation. She has spoken and taught nationally and internationally. We feel that she has written a scholarly and responsible essay, and we are proud to publish it.

Lucy Lafarge