ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that history—particularly the history of sexuality—can, and should, play in clinical practice. It focuses on transgenderism—a relatively new phenomenon in the history of medicine—and draws upon historical and theoretical interests in gender and sexuality in order to assist in psychotherapy with transgendered children, adolescents, and adults. The history of transsexualism per se is a relatively brief one, yet the notion and phenomenon of gender atypicality has long been interwoven in the history of sexual perversion, particularly inversion. Any divergence from biological, behavioural, or psychological sex typicality led to suspicions of "inversion" in the nineteenth century. This is part of the reason homosexuality, transvestism, and transsexualism all emerged from the common diagnosis of inversion. Older adults are more likely to fit the official 1960s mould of transsexualism, whereas those who came out in the past two decades have more variable presentations and sex/gender goals.
