New Book On Transgender Clinical Practices Urges New Paradigm For Treatment

December 15, 2005 - A book edited by Ubaldo Leli and Jack Drescher, editor of the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy (and president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association), urges clinicians to adopt a new model of treatment for transgendered individuals.

Transgendered Subjectivities: A Clinician's Guide was reviewed in the Journal of Sex Research (11/1/2005) by Karl Bryant.

Bryant notes although that this book is "spotty at best" in its coverage of transgenderism, it does contribute "to the trend toward affirmative approaches to understanding and meeting the needs of transgender/transsexual clients."

According to Bryant, "The overriding tenor of this volume stays generally within a transpositive epistemological framework, yet there are other pockets of potentially pathologizing work." One chapter describes four subgroups of transgendered patients and the author of the chapter argues that "GID varies little in substance from one person to another within each subgroup of patients."

Bryant concludes, however, that overall the book is "transpositive." He says: "Even with the shortcomings that I have mentioned, taken as a whole, Transgender Subjectivities can be placed among the ranks of a new breed of clinical handbooks that avoid pathology models of gender variance."

Additional Reading: The Desire For A Sex Change.