The Analysis of a Boy with Transvestite Tendencies—A Contribution to the Genesis and Dynamics of Transvestitism

There are comparatively few psychoanalytic studies of transvestitism. The classical concepts of this perversion have been developed by Fenichel (1930). According to Fenichel, the transvestite has not been able to give up the belief in the phallic nature of women and, in addition, he identifies himself with the phallic woman. Fenichel drew attention to an important accidental factor in transvestitism, namely, "that, as a rule, contemporaneously with the identification with the mother, there exists in another more superficial, psychicstratum, a similar identification with a little girl." He believed that this identification occurs when "a sister has at an early period to a great extent become a mother-substitute." He assumed a special bisexual disposition in his patient, and wondered what the specific circumstances might be which lead to this outcome.

The psychoanalytic study of a child with overt transvestite behavior could provide an opportunity to learn more about the circumstances under which such behavior develops than is possible in the analysis of an adult transvestite, where significant childhood experiences are often not fully recovered and, at best, have to be reconstructed.

I had the opportunity to treat, in long analyses, two tranvestite boys, one of prelatency and one of latency age. In both cases I had their mothers in analysis prior to treatment of the child. I have also treated two adolescents with marked transvestite behavior, and three