ABSTRACT
There is a public and, to some extent, general psychiatric perception that transsexualism is the only or at least the main disorder of gender identity. Certainly, transsexualism is the diagnosis for which most treatment evidence is available. Transsexualism is described in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) as a desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex, usually accompanied by a sense of discomfort with one's anatomical sex. For the diagnosis to be made, transsexual identity should have been present for at least 2 years, and must not be a symptom of another mental disorder, such as schizophrenia, or associated with any intersex, genetic, or sex chromosome abnormality. There is a clinical impression that transsexualism may be different in males and females. Heterosexual male secondary transsexuals can be described as those in whom the transsexualism has arisen after a preceding history of fair or good function in a heterosexual male role.
