ABSTRACT
Slomowitz introduces the section on gender identity, psychoanalysis, and traditional Judaism. It provides important insights of how gender and gender identity are experienced and lived in the minds, bodies, and lives of orthodox Jewish transgender individuals. He includes a contemporary understanding of gender development and identity from Dr. Fausto-Sterling, which explains that gender, as a binary concept (female/male), does not work in the real world. Based on writings of Blechner and Gelernter he shows the power of the mind, through our dreams and other unconscious processes, to create fully lived realities that are not tied to the physicality of the person’s body. From its beginnings, psychoanalysis has theorized that thought is rooted in the body and that bodily experiences are the template on which one’s psychological experiences are mapped.
Although the Bible, as interpreted by the many generations of rabbis and other commentators explicates its theory of gender, male and female, Slomowitz attempts to refrain from sweeping generalizations and focus on personal lived experiences. By focusing on the concepts of dissociation and different self-states, we have the foundational tools to understand lived transgender experiences without condemning and pathologizing the other. This is a unique opportunity to find ways to understand one another across these seemingly unbridgeable divides. Slomowitz’s hope is that by reading this section and this book you find a way across the divide.
