Gender identity disorder. How does that differ from transvestic fetishism? The male or female is uncomfortable with their assigned biological gender. What does that mean, assigned biological gender? Just means what you were born as. “I was born as a man and I feel like I’m trapped in a man’s body. I’m really a woman.” Or vice-versa. Often in childhood. This starts early. The kid may start dressing in the opposite gender clothing and they just kind of always felt like they should have been a little boy, or they should have been a little girl. And eventually they save up their money and commonly have sex reassignment surgery, a sex change operation. Sexually these people may be attracted to men, women, both, neither. It’s very independent of homosexuality or heterosexuality. It’s not who I’m attracted to, it’s who I am. Now classic Boards question is “How do you differ this from transvestic fetishism?” The person with gender identity disorder, that guy, he’s dressing like a woman because he want to be a woman and he feels inside that he is a woman. The transvestic fetishes patient, he’s dressing that way because he feels sexy, he feels aroused when he does that.
Homosexuality has been a controversy among psychiatrists for decades, even Freud addressed it. He wrote a letter to a homosexual patient’s mother and talked about it, “You know, it’s not that bad” and stuff like that. Currently it is not considered as pathology, per se, by the American Psychiatric Association. The APA came out and said this is not pathology. There was a time in history when there used to be what was called ego-syntonic versus ego-dystonic homosexuality where gay men who were happy with themselves were ego-syntonic, gay men who were not happy with themselves were ego-dystonic. People who have done research in this area have come to the conclusion that most gay men have what is called a “coming out” process. That is a period where they are unhappy with their sexual orientation before they accept their sexual orientation. So they got rid of that ego-syntonic, ego-dystonic stuff.
Recent Comments