Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference

In this strikingly original work, Patricia Gherovici makes a powerful argument for the compatibility of transgenderism and psychoanalysis. Not only that: far from suggesting how psychoanalysts might treat transgender people, Gherovici persuasively proposes that transgenderism might provide new ideas for the clinic. Starting from the premise that the body is not a given, fixed entity, but entails a process of embodiment (a becoming of the body), she argues that psychoanalysis-Lacanian psychoanalysis in particular-is uniquely qualified to support transgenderism's commitment to new forms of desire.[The frequently presumed gender trouble of transgender people is in fact a universal condition: the impossibility of representing sexuality, an impossibility that implicitly subverts the fixity of all identitarian claims.]With its impeccable scholarship, lucid presentations of complex ideas, and impressive theoretical sophistication, Gherovici's important work will surely attract a wide audience of readers interested in cultural studies focused on gender and sexuality. -Leo Bersani, emeritus professor, UC Berkeley, author of Homos and Is the Rectum a Grave and Other Essays.

Patricia Gherovici is the psychoanalyst we need now, more so than ever, to show us how and why sex remains a problem, an enigma without adequate solution, even for psychoanalysis. Gherovici navigates the difficult terrain of our transgender cultural moment better than any clinician I've read. Her study will be tremendously illuminating for clinical practitioners, as well as for theorists of gender and sexuality. -Tim Dean, author of Unlimited Intimacy and Beyond Sexuality

Psychoanalysis, historically, has not had a good grasp on transgender issues. This is a shame, given that psychoanalytic theory generally offers one of the most robust accounts of subjectivity availabile to us, and that psychoanalytically-infomed clinical practice has great capacity to achieve good therapeutic results for people experiencing psychical suffering. Thankfully that's changing, in no small part through the brilliant revisionist work of Patricia Gherovici, who demonstrates that Lacan was never as hostile to transsexual clients as some of his followers have made him out to be. In her deft handling, the existence of nonpathological transgender subjects brings a transformative pressure to bear on key psychoanalytic concepts, while demonstrating how psychoanalytic insight can help relieve suffering for transgender people without invalidating their way of being in the world. -Susan Stryker, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies, University of Arizona, and co-editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly