XVII Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association Symposium
31 October - 4 November 2001, Galveston, Texas, U.S.A.

Transgender Emergence

LEV, ARLENE ISTAR U.S.A.

This workshop explores the process of "coming out" as transgendered or transsexual within the psychotherapeutic and developmental framework. Gender variance has been pathologized within the dominant discourse and therapeutic assessment, diagnosis, and evaluation is necessary to receive medical treatments. Therapists are placed in a "gatekeeping" role that limits the potentiality of client-therapist relationship, since clients desiring medical treatments try to "fit" into the parameters of diagnostic categories. Gender variant clients who are struggling with gender dysphoria, or those requesting referral for medical services, who are willing to risk being honest with the therapist about their phenomenological experience of gender difference, present with diverse experiences and identity configurations. These narratives are often outside the medical paradigm, and have a developmental trajectory, as the client emerges into an authentic description of self. This workshop will introduce a developmental model for the process of transgender emergence that guides psychotherapists in an honest evaluation of identity development and allows for unique gender expressions, outside of a pathologizing framework.