The first English translation of a defining study of transsexualism.
What is a person’s gender? How do we determine whether someone is a man or a woman? Who gets to decide the sex of an individual: the individual, parents, doctors, judges, politicians, God? And how does medical transformation of one’s body impact an individual’s psychological, social, cultural and biological status? In this fascinating, eminently readable work––originally published in France in 1997 and now translated into English for the first time––French psychoanalyst Colette Chiland grapples with these questions as she explores the many dimensions of gender and gender discomfort.
Transsexualism: Illusion and Reality masterfully combines the insights of psychology, psychoanalysis, history, anthropology, sociology and personal experience to rethink transsexualism within the frames of identity, subjectivity and the wider social-historical world. Chiland’s compelling text challenges readers of every sexual identity and orientation to reconsider their notions about the origins, implications and possibilities of gender.
“Transsexualism is a stimulating, provocative, and important book. Chiland does not back away from difficult issues. She forces all of us to look at our assumptions about transsexualism and to re-examine what gender and sex really mean.”—Christine Ware, author of Where Id Was: Challenging Normalization in Psychoanalysis
“Chiland’s book is an extremely thorough survey which enables us to benefit both from her prodigious reading on the subject and from her own personal clinical work.”—Serge Lebovici, Le Carnet Psy
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Nominated for the Gradiva Award in the Historical, Cultural & Literary Analysis category by the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP) 2004
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COLETTE CHILAND is Psychiatrist-in-Chief at the Alfred-Binet Center and Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychology at René Descartes University in Paris. She is the author of several books, including Homo Psychanalyticus (1990). Philip Slotkin has translated several psychoanalytic books, including most recently In the Analyst’s Consulting Room, by Antonino Ferro.
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