Similarities in becoming: transsexuals and adolescents

Abstract

The Gender Identity Service (located in Boston, Massachusetts) is an evaluative and counseling unit designed to provide full services including sexual reassignment to transsexuals. In that capacity, since the spring of 1972, we have seen over 120 transsexuals. During this time we have been impressed with behavioral similarities between our population of transsexuals and adolescents. This emerging observation provided impetus for the present paper. After carefully reviewing our caseload material it is our contention that indeed psychological, biological and sociological similarities do exist. Through a comparison of these, we hope not only to make transsexual behaviors more comprehensible but also to underscore the importance of the adolescent years for the development of adult gender identity. Using primarily an ego psychoanalytic approach, the paper attempts to demystify the diagnosis of transsexual by pointing to its dynamic similarities with adolescence.