The Body in the Transsexual.

Abstract

With reference to a case of masculine transsexuality, this subject is discussed from the point of view of different psychopathological conceptions, its theoretical and metapsychological implications and its connection with various theoreticalclinical problems in psychoanalytical praxis. Perversion? Psychosis? According to Stoller, in these cases the mother-child relationship does not allow the son's masculinity to emerge. Instead, a primary, early and unconflictive identity with the feminine gender takes place. The transsexual's desire is to have a body agreeing with his feminine psyche. The mother finds pleasure in this body due to her peculiar
ideal of a perfect phallus, her feminized son. Who is raving? The mother or the son? Is there a fusion without anxiety nor psychosis?
Safouan differentiates transsexuals from perverted patients in that the tetter carry out their design into reality and the former into the imaginary. The only thing which becomes phalluspharous for the transsexual is the mother's body, the other of the demand, which makes it impossible to overcome desire since it requires insatisfaction and prohibition. Only stripping off the penis, desire
would become accesible. In this paper the above stated psychopathological group is discussed by means of interviews and autobiographical material from a patient in whom one can find the corresponding clinical and theoretical elements which we intend to study. Then there is an analysis of Schreber's transsexual delirium (raving), starting out from his own Memories and continuing with Freud's comments on this pathology. Further on, primitive mothers and their features are studied as they appear throughout myths, tales, and in anthropology. Also, the different ways phallic mothers show themselves in the clinic (with their castration problems) and how these mothers affect their children's development is analized from both the strictly psychoanalytical point of view as wed as others. The image of such mothers and their role is compared with the fathers's, with emphasis on the meaning and consequences of their possible absence. Finally, the diverse structures of "masculine-feminine" are discussed such as they tend to appear in psychosis, perversion and neurosis.