Congress Paper Abstract

Has psychology something to say about transsexuality?

Dr Francois Sironi 

For God’s sake, what are the psychologists doing? Where are the academics and the researchers in clinical psychology hiding?

Although the concept of transsexuality has now existed for many decades as a specific category of persons who, precisely, "break through" the categories of gender, what is striking, despite this, is that the dominant theories, models and practices in psychology haven’t been modified at all by what we have learnt from what transsexual persons have to teach us about human psychology, but most of all, about our (mal)practice.

Confronted with a highly modern problem, the medical sciences (endocrinology or surgery for example), decided to take up the challenge (although with difficulties). Yet as regards to, for instance, human sciences, the psychologists have a deplorable tendency to confine the transsexual person(s) within obsolete models of thinking, considering transsexuality as an individual, intra-psychic problem. This attitude leads to pathologization. Actually, it is the theories themselves with which they consider transsexuality that induces psychological suffering.

At the Center Georges Devereux (University Paris 8), we created a transsexuality research group. Since January 1997, we have received transsexual persons with whom we try to develop innovative ways of practicing. The group is composed of psychologists, students, medical doctors and representatives of transsexual associations in France. We also work in common with the entire network that surrounds transsexual persons.

We will expose our work and our methodology focusing on the following points:

• To not discriminate the knowledge of the transsexual persons themselves, considered as "experts".
• To consider them as a group, not isolated as single "psychologically suffering individuals".
• To analyze the psychological theories and "therapeutical models" through which they have been thought and handled to date.

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