Psychosomatic Medicine 33:289-300 (1971)
© 1971 American Psychosomatic Society

Family Dynamics in Male Transsexualism

¹ Department of Psychiatry, The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic 525 East 68th St, New York, NY.

Elliott L. Weitzman, MD, Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, 525 East 68th St, Nciv York, NY 10021

From an ongoing study of unsuccessful transsexuals, the authors present detailed data derived from a 30-month study of an atypical young adult male transsexual and his family. The mother is an empty, depressed, masochistic woman; the father, strikingly different from those previously described, is bisexual and emotionally labile. Both parents overwhelmed the child with physical closeness and overstimulation. The patient became an effeminized boy, a preadolescent who wished to be physically like his mother, a transvestic adolescent who sought the sex-conversion operation, and a young adult who surgically removed one of his testicles.

The authors review the inadequacies of each parent's ego and psychosexual development and their influence on the child's development, with special attention to identifications and identity formation and to the vicissitudes of aggression.