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Stroller's psychotherapy with young patients in the Gender Identity Clinic at the University of California in Los Angeles is praiseworthy. However, his theoretical assumptions on the origin of gender identity disturbances can be misleading and contradictory in my opinion.
I feel it is imperative to scrutinize his concepts carefully because of the unfortunate proliferation of clinics now offering gender identity transformation, otherwise known as sex “reassignment” surgery. In this connection, it is significant to note that UCLA itself, despite its Gender Identity Clinic, has thus far carried out only one transsexual operation, due to an interdepartmental memorandum prohibiting such procedures on anyone except intersexes.
First of all, I am puzzled by what Dr. Stoller means when he states that he possesses a body of information to which the “contrasting scales of common sense and psychoanalytic theory can be applied.”
According to Stoller, “The conclusion reached from studies of the development of core gender identity is that one's conviction regarding the feeling that he is a member of his assigned sex is directly the result of his parents' unquestioning belief that he is a member of that sex.” He applies this formulation both to hermaphrodites, i.e., anatomical intersexes (embryological defectives) as well as to transsexual boys (anatomical normals). It is his belief that both of these groups develop faulty or pathological gender identity from “non-conflictual, non-defensive origins.” Simultaneously, he mentions the importance of the earliest stages of learning, identity formation, “primitive bits” of memories and fantasies, ego and identity nuclei, “sophisticated psychic structures,” the importance of frustration, and refers to the
separation-individuation phase. Furthermore, he rightly concludes these “foundations are the result of conflict between the infant's primitive wishes and the opposing demands of his mother (society).”
It is obvious that one cannot have i