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The principal virtue of this book is that it offers the reader, who may not have experienced it in his own work, the subjective experiences, via verbatim dialogues, of adults and children who consciously accept their identification with the gender of the opposite sex, i.e., who are transsexuals.
The author also reports the experiences of adults who court and discover that the object of their love is a transsexual whom they may eventually choose to live with and marry. The reactions of parents who suspect and discover that their child has a cross-sexual identification is also sympathetically and dramatically portrayed.
Secondarily, the author cursorily reviews biological, psychological, anthropological, and cultural theories and points of view regarding this baffling phenomenon. He raises questions but regretfully gives no answers.
Thirdly, he describes his psychotherapeutic interactions with individuals of a transsexual orientation who want pharmacological or surgical intervention that would give them the secondary sexual characteristics of the opposite sex. He also describes his therapeutic program for children who early show a cross-gender sexual identification. He touches on the ethical and moral considerations of the problem and eloquently pleads for tolerance and understanding.
For this reader, the major interest in the book was the theoretical questions that it leaves unanswered. The author makes the interesting observation that the transsexual identifies with and wishes to become a member of the opposite sex, whereas the homosexual or lesbian does not wish to change his gender. I am not sure that this observation is clinically valid unless it is limited to the conscious level of experience to the exclusion of preconscious and unconscious wishes and fantasies. More interesting from the theoretical point of view is the report that transsexual wishes are consciously evident in fantasies at least as early as three years of age. If this is so, it would lead to a re