Transsexualism: Illusion and Reality (Disseminations: Psychoanalysis in Contexts) [Paperback]

Colette Chiland (Author), Philip Slotkin (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0819566586 | ISBN-13: 978-0819566584

The first English translation of a defining study of transsexualism.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

6 x 9 trim. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

COLETTE CHILAND is Psychiatrist-in-Chief at the Alfred-Binet Center and Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychology at Rene Descartes University in Paris. She is the author of several books, including Homo Psychanalyticus (1990). Philip Slotkin has translated several psychoanalytic books, including most recently In the Analyst's Consulting Room, by Antonino Ferro. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan (August 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819566586
• ISBN-13: 978-0819566584
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 1.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,166,892 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Transsexualism, August 27, 2003

By 

Arianne van der Ven - See all my reviews

This review is from: Transsexualism: Illusion and Reality (Disseminations: Psychoanalysis in Contexts) (Paperback)

The author is the psychiatrist-in-chief of the Alfred Binet center in France and has treated many transsexual clients. On the back of the cover her book promisses "Transsexualisms first defining study". This would require a good literature review, new research data, case studies or new interpretations of older data. Instead the reader finds slapstick images, generalising one-liners and moral bravado.

According to the author, psychotherapy is able to turn TSs around, and the author believes her clients sickness responsible for her lack of succes. The transsexuals she saw, without exeption, flee her psychoanalytical treatment. They falsely resolve the psychological conflict at the root of their gender problem throug surgery. Thus they remain sick as before and sadly "mutilatated" after. All of her clients, without exeption, suffer from amnesia in regard to the conflicts in their clildhood, are borderline psychotic, in denial of their homosexuality as well as their birth sex, and have a stereotypical barby doll image of the men or women they become. When they do not fully pass in their chosen sex they are "pathetic". They suffer the delusion that their post-operative genitalia entitle them to man- or womanhood. In many asides the author assures her readers she is a caring analyst, a feminist and a philosopher. The author uses philosopher Paul Ricoeur, one I esteem deeply, to validate her opinion that TSs should opt for a life in their birth sex. Ricoeur, in my understanding, is concerned with the limitations of human experience in general. Applying it to gender dysphoria may be considered a leap out of context.

On the back of the cover, this book ensures a full review of the literatur on TS, but it is honest to say the author leaves out many studies not useful to clarify her broad vision.

The author has been working extensively with transsexual clients in a French clinic specialized in their care. I am surprised that a therapist so talented was elected to treat these clients. They do not open up about their doubts and ambivalancies. The aim of any therapeutic enterprise (to find an individual approach and treatment plan) was never fulfilled. This must be very sad to both author and clients.

I must noe that it is possible that this author's client population and treatment setting may be very different from the clients I see. Many of these have chosen for a partial medical treatment, and some for no medical treatment at all. How to reconcile this with Cliland's findings? It may be that the author has a less divers clientele in her office. If her book reflects a very negative psychoanalytical stance towards the medical treatment of gender dysphoria in the French medical community, might it be that only the most desperate cases may make it to the obligatory visits to the authors office? A client-population so traumatised by their gender conflict, they suffer from all it's secondary terrors as well? Like borderline and personality disorders? This is, of course highly speculative.

Clinical practice in other countries is less negative, resulting in generaaly good mental health among the transgender population I see. They show a precise and painful memory, not of the certainty of being a member of the other sex, but of doubt, uncertainty and desire. All those fragile human feelings they hoped to grow out of but did not, in spite of their best efford. At some time this feld reality came in conflict with the lives they wanted for themselves. The story is not one of denial of a biologic reality, it is one of admittance to one not coveted by psychoanalysis. This falls outside it's grasp. My clients are not borderline, not combattative, and share willingly their doubts, worry, sadness and mourning. They come to various medical and non-medical solutions. How can I as a responsibly acting clinician reconcile this with this author's noions?

It might help, and this is only a suggestion, if this psychiatrist-in-chief stops hearing Freud's and Lacan's voices, and started listening to her clients. She might hear something. have I done my clients right? Have I ben the best people-helper I can be? Have I listened? Who was I preocupied with? My clients?

Arianne van der Ven

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Misguided, November 21, 2004

By 

Marcella G. (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Transsexualism: Illusion and Reality (Disseminations: Psychoanalysis in Contexts) (Paperback)

Colette Chiland admits she's a psychiatrist of the 'old school' in Europe. Which means her background is not medical, but in the humanities. In fact, her book is nothing but a philosophical/ethical analysis of transsexualism viewed as a problem stemming from social mores.

Which is not the case, since a true understanding of 'gender dysphoria' requires a medical background.

Books on the ethics of SRS and such were fairly common during the 70s. Several of those are revisited, and the sources cited by Dr. Chiland are all for the most part 30 years old or more. Her research is outdated because she does not want to take into account the more current, medical view of 'gender dysphoria' as something that has a biological basis.

Some of the generalizations are almost laughable. For example, she talks about 'gender dysphoric boys' who draw two women: one like a good fairy, the other like an evil witch. According to her, one of the root causes of transsexualism in genetic males is such splitting of the mother image. Wanting to disappear the witch, they want to become the fairy.

And that is not even the most farfetched bit.

Even so, the book may have some value as a different view on the social implications of transition and such. I'd say it's an interesting read for anyone with a background in the humanities. Anyone familiar with the idea of a male phallocentric narrative as the core of modern social order will see whence the author is coming.

Still, Dr. Chiland seems to come to the subject with an axe to grind, and although at times interesting, in the end the book is irrelevant to those to whom it is addressed: experts in the field and the transsexual men and women out there.

PS: This book's cultural context is France or, more widely, continental Europe. Some of the references and names cited will be rather obscure to the American reader, and the ideas proposed by such names, unknown. Dr. Chiland has stretched the area covered by post-structuralist theory to what is now more properly treated by medicine, although in the end she clings to a dated essentialism where men are born men and will die men, and women are born to have children. Love and marriage are, for her, means to an end (having children); and transsexualism is a narcissistic disorder because it goes against such end.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars dont waste your money, January 20, 2009

By 

Derek R. Allen "Dannica" (NYC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Transsexualism: Illusion and Reality (Disseminations: Psychoanalysis in Contexts) (Paperback)

Very outdated and condescending. Perhaps this is attributable to the translator. I hope so. In once instance, MTFs are referred to as "pathetic." I threw this in the garbage today and will hopefully forget I ever bought it and read it.