ABSTRACT
Gender dichotomy is the most primary dichotomy internalized in human thinking. It acts as a prototype for all the later dichotomies, in a sense inaugurating dichotomous thinking in general—first within the imaginaryof the parent who holds the soon to be born infant in his or her mind—and then within the mind of the infant itself. Perceiving gender as a process rather than as a given, this chapter focuses on the conditions that enable the establishing of a dialectic and unsaturated gender space—one that enables both a concrete and fantasized creative mobility between the two gender poles—versus the conditions that generate a polar, saturated, gender dichotomous stagnation. Its main claim is that an excess of gender dichotomous thinking may not only block the option of the infant’s coming to terms with its own actual gender—but also, paradoxically, constitute even the possible act of gender-crossing as a pseudo transformation rather than as an act of a true change. The theoretical assumptions are followed with literary and clinical illustrations.
