Here’s a script (in radio-ish format) I wrote up for a book report presentation in my senior film seminar. We were assigned to read a book on psychoanalysis, so I of course chose one on transness. It's a 5 minute read (nice work sticking to the assignment, past Jay).
The book was written by a cis woman who works with trans patients, so it was definitely interesting to read as a trans person. I didn't include much of that perspective in my presentation, but had this been a reading group I wouldn't have shut up about it. There's for sure chapters that'd be excellent for trans book club but I'd have to go back and find them, especially because some definitely aren't great for people new to psychoanalysis :P
I'm experimenting with including audio in my posts, so I've also included a recording of the script. Enjoy!
Transgender Psychoanalysis:
A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference
by Patricia GHER-o-VEE-chi.
It’s a follow up to
Please Select Your Gender,
which some of us read
in Daae’s reading group last year.
Please Select Your Gender was published in 2010,
right before trans people became much more commonly recognized.
GHER-o-VEE-chi sites pop culture moments
like Katelyn Jenner coming out as trans
as the reason for the rise in awareness.
GHER-o-VEE-chi published Transgender Psychoanalysis in 2017
to address new issues
and things she’d missed in the first book.
She makes a point to depathologize transness,
or dismiss the notion that being trans is a mental disorder.
Psychoanalysis has a history of pathologizing non normative genders & sexualities,
but that’s recently been rejected.
The path-ologiz- ation has created a resistance among trans people to psychoanalysis.
GHER-o-VEE-chi pushes for the idea
that psycho-analysts
have something to learn from trans patients and should listen to them.
She says psycho-analysts hold power over trans people.
They have the power to prescribe hormones and surgeries
that are often a matter of life or death for trans patients.
Trans patients often end up being resistant and avoidant of psychoanalysis
because they are improperly diagnosed with psychosis and delusion.
And yet trans people are statistically more likely to participate in talk therapy
because of the barrier created for treatment
that necessitates going through therapy.
Historically transness has been analyzed through the Lacanian lens of hysteria.
(The classic hysteric question is
“am I a man or a woman?”)
Gherovici instead pushes to think of it as a synthome.
It’s not something that needs to be eliminated
And can instead be enjoyable
and used as a creative solution of survival.
People transition to make life livable.
Lacan says both sexes are castrated.
The physical body is inherently related to lack.
“Sexual difference” is a term that fills the gap in language
or signification when someone’s sex can’t be sorted into male or female.
Gherovici talks about how infants become sexed subjects
without knowledge of language for sexual difference.
This creates a lack.
A loss is caused by the assignment of sex at birth.
But lack can be a productive force.
Desire is created by lack.
Gherovici talks about how
Lacanian concepts of sex
are modeled around the presence or lack of a phallus,
but nonbinary people reject that.
They work to attain a neutral appearance and voice,
but often don’t care about the presence or lack of a phallus.
Psycho-analysis today is catching up to a modern,
non-binary understanding of sex.
Gherovici sites analyst Jaqueline Rose
for identifying resistance to identity as the center of psychic life.
We form an identity based on the people around us to form a sense of self.
At the same time,
adapting identity to what others see shrinks yourself and limits your full self understanding.
We see this in things like the notion of “passing”.
Binary trans people often base their transition
on the idea of becoming indistinguishable from the sex they are transitioning to,
though this can limit your understanding of yourself
and the implications of experiencing living as both sexes.
The book talks about the idea of
“owning” your body,
and how this idea can unalign you from your body,
not just in gender but in weight, age,
and any other physical representation you imagine yourself as.
If you can imagine your body as the encasement of “you”,
you can be “trapped in the wrong body”,
which is how many trans people describe their relationship with their body.
Transition can serve as a way to escape
“the prison of flesh and blood”.
GHER-o-VEE-chi talks about the link between transness and death.
The suicide attempt rate is 41% among trans people
vs. 4.6% among the general population.
Your body is the one place you cannot leave.
The book talks about plastic surgery
as a way around this
and a way to deny mortality and fix “imperfections”.
Beyond trans people, cis women will use surgeries
to appear younger
and erase evidence of past pregnancies.
The understanding of your body as an object used to represent your inner self
is not exclusive to trans people.
It’s a universal experience
to shape your body to best reflect who you imagine yourself to be,
and escape from the limits created by your inability to leave your own body.
If you can’t leave it,
you might as well find a way to make it enjoyable.
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