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A psychoneurotic symptom represents either a defense against prohibited instinctual strivings or a break-through of the original impulse in a more or less disguised form, or a simultaneous occurrence of both. Defense against the phohibited impulse is the function of the ego. It is the id that exerts the instinctual pressure. The prohibitions are represented by the demands of the superego.
Male transvestitism is a complex and eminently overdetermined symptom. Basically it consists of a combination of fetishism and female identification (1, 2). The fetishism is a denial of castration through refusal to acknowledge that a woman has no penis. This constitutes an ego-defense. Female identification in a male transvestite can be viewed as a break-through of the original impulse in a disguised form, inasmuch as it means “I love my mother in me.”
According to Fenichel the transvestite act itself has two unconscious meanings: 1. An object-erotic and fetishistic one: a person cohabits not with a woman but with her clothes representing symbolically her penis. 2. A narcissistic one: the transvestite himself represents a phallic woman under whose clothes a penis is hidden (3).
In the transvestite, who frequently is at the same time an exhibitionist, the need to display the female attire corresponds to the need to display the penis. Instead of the penis he exhibits the penis symbol, thus seeking relief from castration anxiety.
The above quotations from the literature on transvestitism deal in main with four mechanisms: 1. Female identification. 2. Fetishism. 3. Secondary narcissism. 4. Exhibitionism.
It is the purpose of this paper to elucidate the problem of transvestitism from the standpoint of its structural anchoring; to focus on the role of the superego and to discuss the libido organization in the light of the theory of instinctual defusion. (4)
In a case to be described below the predominent symptom was anchored not only on the id and the ego, but also on the superego. Here, tran