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While the literature on childhood gender-identity disorders and childhood transsexualism is quite extensive, it is also fragmented and lacks a sound underpinning (Sperling, 1964; Greenson, 1966; Zuger, 1966; Harrison, Cain, and Benedek, 1968; Kohut, 1969; Green, Newman, and Stoller, 1972; Bloch, 1974, 1978; Volkan and Kavanaugh, 1977; McDonald, 1981; Loeb and Shane, 1982; Pruett and Dahl, 1982; Green, 1985; Meyer and Dupkin, 1985). Indeed, some of the key concepts, such as core gender identity (Stoller, 1966, 1968, 1970; Gershman, 1970; Kleeman, 1971), are even put forth without reference to such events as the simultaneous development of the nuclear self system.
Given the temporal relationship between core gender-identity development and the organization of the nuclear self system it would appear that Self Psychology theory (Kohut, 1977, 1984) could provide us with the necessary and sufficient theoretical underpinnings for a theory of gender-identity development (especially via the concept of a selfobject cf. Coen, 1981; Tolpin, 1971, 1978; Basch, 1981, 1984a, b; Stepansky and Goldberg, 1984; Stolorow, 1984; Stolorow and Lachmann, 1980).