psychotherapy

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“Transnormativity in the Psy Disciplines” reprinted in feminist reader



I’m really happy to announce that an article I co-authored, “Transnormativity in the Psy Disciplines: Constructing Pathology in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and Standards of Care”, has been reprinted in the Palgrave Handbook of Power, Gender, and Psychology.

Originally published in American Psychologist in 2019, this was among the first of many articles written collaboratively with my colleagues in the Trans Pregnancy Project team: Damien W Riggs, Carla Pfeffer, Sally Hines, Francis Ray White, and Elisabetta Ruspini. I hope that through its inclusion in this new handbook on theories of gender and power in feminist psychology, this slightly updated essay will reach new readers and provide helpful context on the construction of sex/gender norms through classification and diagnosis.

As I explained on its original publication, in this piece “we examine how the interests of cisgender clinicians and trans patients have variously been opposed and entwined, and contextualise this in relation to wider structures of racism, sexism, colonialism, and binary thinking around sex and gender. We focus especially on how guidance for diagnosing trans people and managing trans healthcare has been contested across various versions of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM) and the International Harry Benjamin Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA, later WPATH) Standards of Care.”

A free open access version of the original article remains available here: [Transnormativity in the Psy Disciplines: Constructing Pathology in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and Standards of Care].

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New article: Transnormativity in the psy disciplines

Today sees the publication of the first full article from the Trans Pregnancy project team, in the journal American Psychologist:

Transnormativity in the psy disciplines: Constructing pathology in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and Standards of Care

[click here to read in American Psychologist]

[click here to read free open access version]

In this article we provide a brief history of how certain narratives and expectations around how trans people should behave and be treated have been constructed through the disciplines of psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis, especially in a US context.

It is part of a great new special issue on Histories of psychology after Stonewall, edited by Peter Hegarty and Alexandra Rutherford.

We examine how the interests of cisgender clinicians and transgender patients have variously been opposed and entwined, and contextualise this in relation to wider structures of racism, sexism, colonialism, and binary thinking around sex and gender. We focus especially on how guidance for diagnosing trans people and managing trans healthcare has been contested across various versions of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM) and the International Harry Benjamin Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA, later WPATH) Standards of Care.

This article does not focus specifically on questions of fertility, pregnancy and childbirth (although we briefly touch very on this topic). Rather, it provides important historical background on the evolution of certain medical services which have help to shape how trans people are treated and percieved. We are also currently writing a number of articles that will report on specific research findings from the Trans Pregnancy project, and I am really looking forward to sharing them also when they are published!