Pierre Vacher (1892-1990) doctor and sexologist

Vachet was raised in Givry, Saône-et-Loire, and qualified as Docteur en médecine, Paris, 1915. He later became the Director of the École de psychologie and editor of La Revue de psychologie appliquée.

Vachet and the German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld were both active nudists and had first met when German and French nudist groups had joint meetings. It is most likely that it was from Vachet that Hirschfeld learned of the French practice of permissions de travestissement, which dates from November 1800 and continued through into the 20th century - and was also introduced to the French word travestissement which he rendered in German as Transvestismus, and travesti/e which he rendered as Transvestit(in).

In 1927 it was proposed to create a French section of the World League for Sexual Reform. The French branch was called Comité Pro Amore—Ligue de la Régénération Humaine, and was initially under Vachet.

In 1931 Vachet translated and likely edited (for there is no German original) an anthology of writings by Hirschfeld with a few by Felix Abraham, which we have already considered.

Two years later Vachet published Psychologie du Vice : Les Travestis.

Despite the suggestion of the title that Psychologie du Vice would be a series, no other books were published under that rubric.

Synopsis:

The page after the title page tells us: “Eight copies of this work were issued on pure wire velin lafuma, numbered pure wire velin 1 to 5 and i to iii; and sixteen copies on satined outhenin-chalender alfa, numbered alfa 1 to 10 and i to vi.”

Forward

“FOR a long time I have been proposing to publish a series of studies on the Psychology of Vice. Some of my previous works have already dealt with general insights into sexual life and its anomalies. Today I would like to use the material of my clinical observations in more fragmentary and detailed studies. The transvestites will inaugurate the gallery of obsessed and maniacal vice. 

The term ‘vice’, which in its vulgar use fits very well with the system of sexual anomalies, belongs both to the vocabulary of the moralist and to that of the doctor, the former judging and condemning according to social values, the latter limiting himself to explaining by the causes. Freudianism must be given credit for having stripped sexual immorality of that sacrilegious character which still inspired the best alienists of the last century, who had to deal with this subject, with the virtuous accents of bourgeois indignation.

In fact, it is not easy to determine where vice begins and ends, because the distinction between the normal and the abnormal, the natural and the artificial, cannot be a sufficient touchstone for human behaviour.

The origin of perversions is not always easy to determine. Obscure physiological actions may play a part, as in the tendency of the individual to play the role of the opposite sex, or to choose the object of his desire in the same sex as his own. Deficiencies or excesses of glandular secretions may lead to an insufficient differentiation of the morphological characters and instincts of a given sex. But it is in the imagination of the individual that the main source of these vices is to be found, in the attribution of the power of sexual excitation to objects, situations, behaviours, more or less artificially associated with the satisfaction of desire.”

PART ONE: STORY OF PIERRETTE

This is an extended (48 page) case study of one of Vachet’s patients, a 28-year-old with anxiety and despair. A university graduate with a male body and a job that required a male uniform, Pierrette’s one aspiration was to be free to live as female when not at work, and she knew of the sex-change operations that had already been done in Berlin and Vienna and wished for the same in France. Vachet sent for the parents, explained that the condition was harmless, and that their son’s depression and despair could be relieved. They agreed that he should have his own flat. 

“What strikes you first of all about Pierrette's mentality is the contrast between the embarrassment, the inhibition, the anxiety he feels under the male costume and the freedom, the euphoria, the ‘nerve’ that the wearing of female clothing assures him.” 

The operations were not available in France (although this was a couple of years after a Danish artist resident in Paris, Lili Elvenes, had gone to Dresden for such surgery). 

Pierrette was not gynephilic, nor would she consider sex with a man until she had the operation. She had first dressed as a girl for a party when 14, followed by parts in amateur theatre. From age 18 Pierrette explored costume balls and what other opportunities there were to present as female. In 1932 she approached Dr Vachet, although with a major caveat: 

“I have not come to ask you to ‘cure’ me but to help me. To accept the slightest attempt at healing, i.e. to return to my male nature, would be a crime against myself, a mortal sin. I feel like a woman before God, a woman in my soul, and this feeling is infinitely stronger than any reasoning.”

Part Two

This contains three chapters, on D’Éon, de Choisy and Victor Barker.  The first two, D’Eon and de Choisy have been retold many times, and Vachet’s retellings contain anecdotes that later and better researched accounts have debunked. Vachet writing in 1933 mainly summarises Barker’s sensational trial in 1929, with only a passing mention of the British Fascist Party (actually the splinter group, the National Fascisti), and of course nothing about what happened in later years.

Part Three: nature and psychology of transvestites

“Transvestism is one of the most curious sexual anomalies to study, and also the most difficult to explain. It seems that the same explanation is not valid for all cases, that the wearing of the garment of the other sex has different causes according to the individuals, that it constitutes a symptom whose value is essentially variable. I will try to untangle this skein as best I can.”

1. “pseudo transvestites, those whose disguise is only a means of concealment or masquerade”. Some of these are criminal. Vachet gives an example: “It was a wartime deserter who had found it convenient, in order to escape danger, to pass himself off as killed in action and to lead a life under the guise of the female sex which he knew would never be exposed to the danger of the review boards”. The facts are slightly off but this could be Paul Grappe. For some of these, “it is linked to that well-known mentality which we call mythomania. These are individuals who are more or less unbalanced, fundamentally vain, always on the lookout for anything that might make them interesting, essentially fabulists, inventors of stories.” As an example of this Vacher suggests D’Éon.
2. Homosexual transvestites. “In this case the justification of the instinct of transvestism is confused with that of the tendencies which push them to sexual passivity. But it is very remarkable that even in common homosexuality the taste for transvestism can be discerned as a mobile element, alien in its essence to pure homosexuality. There are homosexuals who enjoy transvestism, there are other homosexuals to whom transvestism is more or less indifferent. When the latter take on the clothing of the opposite sex, it is rather as an accessory.” Vachet gives a seven-page account (p147 – 153) of a gay female impersonator/trans woman whom he refers to as “comtesse de B…” who would seem to be Pauline Bergolet also known as Arthur W. and “la comtesse” although he does not mention her 1874 autobiography The Secret Confessions of a Parisian: The Countess, 1850-1871, which was published in 1895.

Vachet then discusses male-dressing lesbians. Some wear “mixed clothing”, for example “a short skirt and a male-cut blouse. The blouse has the characteristics of a man's shirt and is completed with a collar and tie”. He does not mention that this had been the height of fashion in the 1920s, nor does he name Radclyffe Hall as its most famous exemplar.

There are others who completely dress, work and marry as men. He gives a two-page account (p155-6) of “X …” who did so. Only once did X agree to marry a man – that lasted eight weeks.

Vachet then mentions cases from the newspapers or found in the book by Havelock Ellis: John Coulter, Murray Hall, “Catherine Coome”.

Vachet adds a footnote to this section: “Another Hirschfeld statistic on gay men's occupations is of interest in a transvestism study. Half of the male comedians who imitate women, and half of the women who play male comedians on stage are homosexuals and lesbians.”

3. Fetish. Vachet gives several examples from Krafft-Ebing and Albert Moll of persons (all male) who are sexually aroused by certain items of clothing. “But transvestism can be just a special form of fetishism. For example, a man will dress as a woman in order to put on women's clothes in a more intimate relationship with his own body; to create the illusion of having a woman at hand, to draw his pleasure from a woman by drawing it from himself.”

“Hirschfeld tried to differentiate the transvestism of the fetishists from that of the automonosexuals, the latter being essentially individuals who find in themselves the object of their sexual desires, who like to contemplate themselves clothed or unclothed in mirrors (narcissism) and are therefore often inclined to transvestism and adorn themselves.”

4. Heterosexual transvestites. Vachet gives several anecdotes about men whose affairs or marriages with women are complicated by their cross-dressing.
5. False heterosexual transvestites: “transvestites who have married in some way by mistake, believing themselves capable of normal intercourse, or more often believing that they have found in marriage a remedy for a mania which may be bothering them in some way. These people usually divorce promptly and do not repeat the experience.” He also gives an example from Hirschfeld of a shoemaker who had married believing that this would cure his tendency. After 35 years and two adult daughters, at the age of 62, he felt that he must live full-time as female. This quickly led to divorce.
6. Masochistic transvestites. These particularly like corsets, and as tight as possible. Vachet groups these with metatropists – role reversal, a feminine man with a masculine woman – regarding attraction to “strong, imposing women, especially authoritative ones” as a form of masochism. He also mentions cases of ‘involuntary suicide’ where either the corset was too tight or by autoerotic asphyxiation. 
7. Pure forms of transvestism. [This resembles what was later called transsexuality]. “The wearing of the garment is only one element of a very curious overall psychological attitude. The subject feels completely alienated from his true sex. He experiences feelings, even sensations, peculiar to the other sex. He is not necessarily attracted to homosexuality; often he even abhors it. The case of Pierrette, which we reported at the beginning of this book, illustrates this anomaly perfectly.” (p182)

“Very often the transvestite begins by indulging in his mania in the secrecy of the flat, in the evening after work. Then, little by little, the idea imposes itself on him to go out in transvestism, to mingle under his disguise with public life. The transvestite does work corresponding to the sex he would like to have. The male transvestite does housework, cleans the flat, shops, cooks, sews, washes, mends clothes and even makes clothes for his transvestism. He embroiders, makes cushions and doilies. He likes music, has delicate tastes, abstains from smoking and drinking. On the contrary, the transvestite woman disdains housework, is fond of good food, drinks dry and smokes a lot, especially cigars and pipes. Housework is a real pleasure for the male transvestite, so he makes the most industrious and devoted servant. Hirschfeld states that in his Institute he frequently employed transvestites as housekeepers.” (p183)

He then gives some examples of trans men (women soldiers as Vachet calls them). Marie-Antoinette Lix/Michaël le Sombro who rallied the Polish troops in the 1863 rising against Russia. (p185-6); Antonio de Erauso, a nun who became a soldier in South America (p187-9).

He then gives a 20-page account (p191-210) of the doctor patient of Krafft-Ebing, actually Case 129, who married and had children, never transitioned but “observed in myself since my complete effeminacy” including “periodicity of monthly disorders” and “constant sensation of being a woman from head to foot”. This is followed by a 5-page account (p210-15), Krafft-Ebing’s Case 130, of a masculine woman, a tomboy who married at age 21, but remained indifferent to men. She submitted to marital duties and bore six children. At age 36, she suffered stroke and had to stay in bed for two years. Afterwards she found disgust in the femaleness of her body and her life, and her features became masculine, and finally she grew a beard.

8. “Advanced transvestites always push to the extreme their desire to assimilate to the opposite sex. They regularly ask the doctor to remove the specific organs of their sex and, if possible, to create more or less approximate organs for the opposite sex. Women ask for the removal of their breasts and even more so for the suppression of the female function par excellence of menstruation; they want their ovaries removed or at least suppressed by radiotherapy. Men ask for castration, or the removal of the penis; often even the creation of an artificial vagina among the partitions of the perineum. Such operations have been performed in Germany, particularly at the Institute for Sexual Sciences which Magnus Hirschfeld founded in Berlin and which was recently destroyed from top to bottom under the impulse of Hitler's moralism and anti-Semitism. Hirschfeld repeatedly tried to justify his interventions by citing cases of suicide of transvestites who had been denied this sex change. Here are two observations, one relating to a man, the other to a woman, who underwent operations of this kind. These were homosexual transvestites.”

Vachet then tells two success stories (p216-9), those of Hirshfeld’s patient who worked as a maid in his Institute, Dorchen Richter, and of Gerd Katter, then only 23, but who had already obtained a double mastectomy and a Transvestitenschein.

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Vachet sums up (p223-232):

“Transvestism can be dissociated from other sexual anomalies, that it can even occur in its pure state outside of any erotic preoccupation in individuals who are above all concerned with leading a public life in the clothing and with the occupations of the other sex. What then is at the root of this singular anomaly? The various explanations that have been given by authors can be roughly reduced to two modalities.”

1. “For some, Hirschfeld for example, the transvestite obeys a physiological determinism. He is a "constitutional". In favour of this explanation is the precocity of these manifestations. Also, in many cases, the transvestite presents some morphological characteristics which deviate from the template of his sex: proportions of the larynx and voice, skin texture, hair system, gracility or coarseness of the forms. It cannot be denied that in certain cases the transvestite represents an intermediate morphological type.”
2. “… according to Havelock-Ellis, the transvestite is basically a heterosexual preoccupied with the desire for complete assimilation to the sex he loves and envies. For this explanation to be valid, the subject must manifest in some way his attraction to the opposite sex.”

“I think that the factors of transvestism are not simple. Various determinisms can interfere. A glandular physiological determinism is admissible in certain cases; but in other cases, psycho-pathological mechanisms must be considered.”

Vachet died at the age of 98.

*not the film director

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From a modern perspective this is an awkward text. Sometimes Vachet is helpful and supportive. At other times he repeats transphobic assumptions. His typology is not precise. In “7. Pure forms of transvestism” he appears to be giving examples of persons who would be regarded as transsexual if alive in later generations, including some who transitioned without the aid of 20^th century science. But then he gives the two case studies from Krafft-Ebing of persons who made no attempt to live in their preferred gender.

I could not find any information about what happened to Pierrette after 1933.

Vachet gives no citations at all, and no bibliography.

I obtained the book via Abe Books.

Psychologie du Vice : Les Travestis was published 1 January 1934, which is why I refer to it as being written in 1933.

Vachet mentions the issuing of Transvestitenscheinen in Germany but surprising does not mention that France had been issuing permissions de travestissement since 1800, 110 years earlier.

• Pierre Vachet (ed). Perversions sexuelles, d’après l’enseignement du docteur Magnus Hirschfeld, par son premier assistant le docteur Félix Abraham. Paris: François Aldor, 1931.
• Pierre Vachet. Psychologie du Vice : Les Travestis. Éditions Bernard Grasset, 1934.

• Sylvie Chaperon. “The Revival of Sexuality Studies in France in the Late 1950s”. in Gert Hekma & Alain Giami (eds). Sexual Revolutions. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014: 142
• Gonzague de Larocque-Latour. “Girl or Boy? The French Birth of the Word Sexologie (1901-1912)”. In Alain Giami & Sharman Levinson (eds). Histories of Sexology: Between Science and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021: 200.

BnF

Transgender lexicons: John Money 2: other words

Transgender lexicons:

Virginia Prince
Rose White
Raven Usher
Chris Bartlett
Jack Molay
Raphael Carter
John Money – part 1: gender and transexual

Other Words in Money’s Glossaries:

Man & Woman, Boy & Girl

Gynandromorphy: woman-man-shape. Thus, literally, the term means having some of the body morphology and measurements of an average woman, and some of an average man, or being at neither extreme.

Paraphilia/paraphiliac: a psychological condition of being obsessively responsive to, and dependent on an unusual or unacceptable stimulus in order to have a state of sexual arousal initiated or maintained.

The Man Who Invented Gender: “Although the Oxford English Dictionary records the first usage of paraphilia in 1925, it was largely Money who popularized the term among psychologists. Eventually, the word replaced perversions in psychiatric literature.“

Love and Love Sickness:

Allosex-avoidancy: a socially dictated constraint on personal disclosure to members of the other, but not one’s own, sex. It affects both behaviour (as in locker-room nudity, for example) and communication, as in sexual joking.

Androgynophilia: erotosexual pairing with a man and a woman serially or simultaneously by a member of either sex.

Andromimetic: a girl or woman being a person manifesting the features or qualities of a male in bodily appearance, dress and behaviour. There is no fixed vernacular synonym except, maybe, a bull dyke, that is a female homosexual who lives in the role of a man. She may request breast removal, but not genital surgery, and usually not hormones to masculinize the voice, beard and body hair.

Apotemnophilia: the condition of being dependent on being an amputee, or fantasying oneself as an amputee, in order to obtain erotic arousal.

(Comment: later, several other sexologists have either discussed or facilitated apotemnophilia. Russell Reid referred two such patients to a surgeon; Ray Blanchard and Anne Lawrence gave papers at the Third International Body Integrity Disorder Meeting in 2003 comparing apotemnophilia to Gender Identity Disorder; in 1999 Dr John Brown removed a leg from an apotemnophiliac who subsequently died: Brown was then imprisoned.)

Gynandromorphy: woman-man-shape. Thus, literally, the term means having some of the body morphology and measurements of an average woman, and some of an average man, or being at neither extreme.

Gynecomimetic: a boy or man being a person manifesting the features or qualities of a female in bodily appearance, dress and behaviour. Specifically, a drag queen, which is the vernacular term for a male homosexual who lives in the role of a woman. He retains his male genitals, even though he may take hormones to grow breasts.

Gynophila – Money’s spelling for gynephilia.

Sexosophy: the body of knowledge that comprises the philosophy, principles, and knowledge that people have about their own personally experienced erotic sexuality and that of other people, singly and collectively.

(Comment: as opposed to Sexology, the science of sex).

Other words used by John Money :

Abidance: continuing to remain, be sustained, or survive in the same condition or circumstances.

Ambisexual -- an alternate term for ‘bisexual’, first cited in the OED for 1938. Money claimed to have been one of the first to use the term, but later dismissed it as meaning nothing different from ‘bisexual’.

Autoagonistophilia: pleasure from being viewed while having sex.

(Other writers spell it Autagonistophilia. Presumably the term, or simply autagonist, could also be used for a kind of exhibitionist drag queen who is not able to simply transvest, but is insistent on being read; likewise the kind of transsexual who cannot simply be a woman, but demands that everyone be aware of her transition. Money does not get into a discussion of this.)

Biologically devout -- explaining sexuality and gender identity purely in terms of DNA, hormones etc.

(Comment: there should be a matching term for explaining sexuality and gender identity purely in terms of family, society, social construction, self fashioning etc – but what would that be?)

Biophilia – forms of sexual desire that lead to procreation. See also Normaphilia.

(Comment: the word is also used by Erich Fromm and then Edward O Wilson for the proposed human tendency to seek connections with other life forms. EN.Wikipedia)

Extraspective – the outward observation of things, the default way to observe, the opposite to Introspective. Normally this would not need a name, in that all life forms do it without knowing about introspection. However in Money’s “gender indentity/role (G_I/R” the two complement each other.

Fuckology – a synonym for sexology. Sometimes spelt with a ‘ph’. In 1996 Money presented a paper to the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and therapists which he titled: “Fuckology: The Science We Lack”. There is a 2015 anthology of papers: Fuckology: Critical Essays on John Money’s Diagnostic Concepts.

Homosexology/Heterosexology – a division of sexology by its two major orientations.

Indicatrons “In recognition of the fact that psychology’s units of raw data all serve to indicate something or other to the psychologist or scientist, they can all be categorized as indicatrons.

Katharma. A word to be preferred over ‘freak’. “A person whose social stigmata need to be cleansed by society so that he may become a rightful member of the human race.

Normaphilia – any form of sexual desire that is socially accepted.

Paleodigm: an ancient example or model of a concept, explanation, instruction idea or notion, preserved in the folk wisdom of mottos, maxims, proverbs, superstitions, incantations, rhymes, songs, fables, myths, parables, revered writings, sacred books, dramas, and visual emblems. Paleodigmatics is the organized body of knowledge of paleodigms.

Pedeiktophilia: penile exhibition.

(Comment: because this word starts with ‘ped’, many will take it as having something to do with pedophilia.)

Quim and swive: In neither the standard English vocabulary of literature and science, nor the vernacular vocabulary of uncensored speech, are there terms by which to distinguish what the woman does to the man, in the procreative act, from what the man does to the woman.

The two words, from olden English, best fit the need. Either can be noun or verb.

(Comment: Most online sites that define swive use it for either the male or the female action. Most sites give quim only as a noun, not as a verb.)

Sexual orientation -- Money pushed for this term rather than ‘sexual preference’ in that it is less judgemental and that attraction is not necessarily a matter of free will.

Spookological: “That which is not biological is occult, mystical or, to coin a term, spookological.”

Transvesticism – sometimes used instead of transvestism.

Ycleptance: namimg and being named.

Transgender lexicons: John Money 1: gender and transexual

Transgender lexicons:

Virginia Prince
Rose White
Raven Usher
Chris Bartlett
Jack Molay
Raphael Carter
John Money

John Money coined a lot of words, and took other existing words and made them his own. Man & Woman, Boy & Girl: Differentiation and Dimorphism of Gender Identity from Conception to Maturity, 1972 (co-authored by Anke A. Ehrhardt) and Love and Love Sickness: The Science of Sex, Gender Difference, and Pair Bonding, 1980 both contain extensive glossaries – 16 pages in the former, 17 in the latter, but actually do not contain most of his neologisms. More than that, the glossaries contain both words in general usage and Money’s coinings. Unfortunately, unlike Jack Molay, Money does not indicate his own coinings e.g with an *.

On the other hand Terry Goldie’s The Man Who Invented Gender: Engaging the Ideas of John Money, 2014, had Index entries for most of Money’s neologisms, and chapter 6 is “The Edge of the Alphabet: Neologisms”.

Goldie writes: “Money loved jargon and creating jargon. He seemed to have no idea in sexology for which he did not want to find a Latin or Greek word. “ (p148-9)

Money is, of course, most associated with the term gender, so let us start there.

Gender

Man & Woman, Boy & Girl:

gender identity: the sameness, unity, and persistence of one’s individuality as male or female (or ambivalent), in greater or lesser degree, especially as it is experienced in self-awareness and behaviour. Gender identity is the private experience of gender role, and gender role is the public expression of gender identity.

gender role: everything that a person says and does, to indicate to others or to the self the degree in which one is male or female or ambivalent. It includes but is not restricted to sexual arousal and response. Gender role is the public expression of gender identity, and gender identity is the private experience of gender role.

Love and Love Sickness: (8 years later)

gender: one’s personal, social and legal status as male or female or mixed, on the basis of somatic and behavioural criteria more inclusive than the genital criterion alone.

gender indentity/role (G_I/R): gender identity is the private experience of gender role, and gender role is public manifestation of gender identity. Gender identity is the sameness, unity, and persistence of one’s individuality as male, female, or ambivalent, in greater or lesser degree, especially as it is experienced in self-awareness and behaviour. Gender role is everything that a person says and does to indicate to others or to the self the degree that one is either male or female, or ambivalent; it includes but is not restricted to sexual arousal and response.

And 4 years after that:

In 1984, Money presented a paper “The Conceptual Neutering of Gender and the Criminalization of Sex”.* In it he surveys the changes in the use of the word during the 30 years since he had introduced it in 1955. ``As originally defined, gender role consists of both introspective and the extraspective manifestations of the concept. In general usage, the introspective manifestations soon became separately known as gender identity. The acronym, G-I/R, being singular, restores the unity of the concept. Without this unity, gender role has become a socially transmitted acquisition, divorced from the biology of sex and the brain.”

He notes that “people adopted the term and gave it their own definition”. The first change was to separate gender identity and gender role; the second was the separation of sex from gender as “heralded in the title of Stoller’s book, Sex and Gender (1968)”. He continues: “Many textbooks … now introduce the definition of gender by defining sex as a biological entity -- and as what one is born with. Gender is a social entity, which one acquires after birth, and gender role is the social casting or ordainment of gender. This is the strategy by which gender role has been neutered. It has become devoid of any connection with biology and reproduction. It is defined instead as the product of social history, with male and female roles having been more or less arbitrarily assigned on the basis of male superiority and female inferiority.”

Money also includes the rather odd observation:

“The discordancy that exists in the case of transsexualism is so complete that, in technical jargon, gender identity is sometimes used as an attribute of only the discordant cases. One effect of this usage has been that some theoreticians of homosexuality have been entrapped into attributing a male gender identity to all homosexuals, provided they do not repudiate their self-declared status as male. The qualifier is then added that the homosexual, despite a male identity, has a male object choice or sexual preference. This nomenclature is totally illogical in cases of gynemimetic homosexuals, or drag queens, who impersonate women in variable degrees on a full-time basis. It is more straightforward to attribute to homosexuals a gender identity that is homoerotic, and in its nonerotic components may or may not conform to the masculine stereotype.”

(Comment: Money’s concept of “gender indentity/role (G_I/R)” makes sense in terms of the work that he was doing in the mid-1950s with intersex persons with the same DNA/hormonal conditions who stayed with the gender of rearing, whichever it was. However once the concept of ‘gender’ was released to the wider world, other uses were found for the term. This was inevitable, as it would be for any word that is as useful as ‘gender’. Money is particularly insensitive to feminist usages of ‘gender’ as a social construction and as a system of oppression.

With all respect for Money’s role in enabling transgender surgery at Johns Hopkins, “gender indentity/role (G_I/R” ) renders null the dynamic behind transsexuality. As it consists of “both introspective and the extraspective manifestations” of gender such that they reinforce each other, he is talking of cis gender. In a trans person there is a discrepancy between gender (role) and gender identity, and the act of transition is to change one’s gender (role) to align it with one’s gender identity.)

A note on the word ‘transexual”.

‘transexual’ (one S) was coined by David Cauldwell. Harry Benjamin went with the two-S spelling, but Money retained Cauldwell’s one-S spelling. Article.

Riki Anne Wilchins and others proclaimed that they spelt the word with one S to avoid medical implications. I never understood that claim. One-S, two-S -- it was a choice between Cauldwell-Money on one side and Benjamin on the other. Both have medical implications. To avoid such one needs to say ‘transsexuality’ rather than ‘transsexualism’.
____________

* “The Conceptual Neutering of Gender and the Criminalization of Sex” was first given 20 September 1984 as a lecture at the Tenth Annual Meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research, Cambridge. It was published in The Archives of Sexual Behavior, 14, 1985: 279-290. It was reprinted as the penultimate chapter in John Money. Venuses Penuses: Sexology, Sexosophy and Exigency Theory, 1986.

Continued in part II

Bernard S Talmey. Part II. Gender Variance in Love, A Treatise.

Continued from Part I.

Bernard Talmey’s major work is Love, a Treatise on the Science of Sex-Attraction: For the Use of Physicians and Students of Medical Jurisprudence published in 1915.

We will start with an overview of the book, and then look closely at each section where examples of gender variant persons are given.

This book recapitulates the three previous books which discussed the evolution of sex, the anatomy of sex, the physiology of sex, the psychology of sex.

Then we get to Part VI, “Pathology of Sexuality”. This contains four chapters based on Krafft-Ebing’s classification:

i) Paradoxia (Sexual desires in the old, in infants, causes of early masturbation);
ii) Anaesthesia (partial or total absence of sexual feeling);
iii) Hyperaesthesia (abnormal intensity of the sexual desire and impulse), 1) Mixoscopy, 2) Erotomania, 3) Satyriasis, 4) Nymphomania 5) Masturbation, 6) Incest;

iv) Paraesthesia. This is subdivided:

A) Heterosexuality divided into Masochism, Sadism, Fetishism, Exhibitionism;
B) Homosexuality divided into
a) Perversity (not congenital) subdivided into 1) out of lust, 2) as a profession, 3) through necessity 4) out of fear;
b) Perversion subdivided into 1) psychical hermaphrodism 2) strict homosexuality 3) effemination or viraginity 4) transvestism;
C) Bestiality.

We will examine the sections where persons, who would today be regarded as trans, appear.

iv) Paraesthesia, B) Homosexuality:

The modern reader may be somewhat confused by Talmey’s depiction:

“The perversion of homosexuality has, as a rule, the force of a congenital phenomen and is characterized by precocity. … The child shows its anomaly in its tastes, sentiments, and occupations. The boy avoids the company of other boys. He shuns their games and plays. He is found playing with dolls, ribbons, miniature housekeeping, etc., in company with girls. He is more particular about his dress, in fact, he loves to be dressed like a girl as long as possible. He likes to occupy himself with girls' work, such as knitting, sewing or crochet-work. The homosexual girl is found in the haunts of boys and competes with them in their games. She neglects her dress and assumes and affects boyish manners. She is in pursuit of boys' sports. She plays with horses, balls and arms. She gives manifestations of courage and bravado, is noisy and loves vagabondage. … The perverted man has a profound longing for female clothes. He takes the greatest pleasure in the sight of female attire. He tries to dress as a woman at every opportunity. He likes to frequent masquerade balls where he can dress up as a woman and dance with women. In short, the patient has all the feelings and longings of a woman. The inverted woman, on the other hand, likes to imitate male fashions in general attire and in dressing her hair. It gives her the greatest satisfaction if she is able to dress herself entirely in men's attire and disguise her identity. She further prefers the occupations of men and loves at every occasion to play a man's role. When at a ball she likes to dance with women, and when in a hotel, she loves to discuss politics with men. In short, she feels herself a man.”

iv) Paraesthesia, B) Homosexuality, 1) psychical hermaphrodism,
Talmey uses this term for persons who can have sex with either men or women, what we would call bisexuality, without any other suggestion of gender variance.


iv) Paraesthesia, B) Homosexuality, 3) Effemination or Viraginity with psychical perversion only.
Talmey’s description:

“In the third degree of homosexuality, the so-called effemination or viraginity, where the entire mental existence is altered, the man of this type resembles in his mental qualities a woman,  ‘anima muliebris in corpore virile inclusa’. But his body is still that of a perfect man. The woman, on the other hand, resembles in her mental qualities a man, while her bodily characteristics remain still feminine.”

‘anima muliebris in corpore virile inclusa’ is of course Karl Ulrichs’ expression meaning a female soul in a male body.

The first example is:

“very fond of perfumes, likes to powder and paint himself and to pencil his eye-brows. He is very curious, vain, and loves to gossip”.

The second:

“In the homosexual acts he always plays the passive role. He is effeminate in his character, sensitive, easily moved to tears, and is greatly embarrassed and silent in men's company; while among women he feels himself perfectly at home. He feels himself a perfect woman.”

Talmey’s first FTM example cites Havelock Ellis citing an 1883 paper by PM Wise, and we can identity the person as Joseph Lobdell :

 “When she was deserted by her husband, she began to follow her predilection for masculine avocations. She donned male attire and became a trapper and hunter. She considered herself a man in all that the name applies. After many reverses she entered an almshouse and here she became attached to a young woman. When the attachment became mutual, both left the institution for the woods to commence life instar mariti maritaeque. They lived in this relation until the patient had a maniacal attack that resulted in her committal to an asylum.”

iv) Paraesthesia, B) Homosexuality, 3) Effemination or Viraginity with bodily perversion.
This is Talmey’s only MTF example:

 “His habitus is entirely feminine. The body is slight and non-muscular. The shoulders are narrow, the pelvis broad, the hands and feet decidedly small. The form is rounded with an abundant development of adipose tissue. He has few hairs on beard and mustache. His complexion is fine. His voice is feminine, he speaks in falsetto voice. His gait is rocking, womanly. He wears his hair quite long. Since childhood he was actuated by the desire to put on female attire. He always wore female undergarments, such as shirts, drawers, corsets, etc. He generally wears bracelets on his arms. Whenever he can, he dresses up like a woman and takes long walks upon the streets in such costumes. Through his love for feminine attire he came in contact with several transvestites who form a kind of club in this city. But the latter who abhor homosexual practices soon discovered his motive for the desire of feminine attire and avoided his company. In his reveries, dreams and acts the patient always plays the pathicus. For some reason or other, unknown to the author, the patient committed suicide.“

He then gives FTM examples taken from Krafft-Ebing.

“Her connubial duties were first painful and, later on, loathsome to her. She never experienced sensual pleasure, yet she became the mother of six children. Her husband began at that time to practise onanism (coitus interruptus). At the age of thirty-six she had an apoplectic stroke. From this time on she felt that a great change has taken place in her. She was mortified at being a woman. Her menstruation ceased. Her feminine features assumed a masculine expression. Her breasts disappeared. The pelvis became smaller and narrower, the bones more massive, the skin rougher and harder. Her voice grew deeper and quite masculine. Her feminine gait disappeared. She could not wear a veil. Even the odor emanating from her person changed. She could no longer act the part of a woman, and assumed more and more the character of a man. She complained of having strange feelings in her abdomen. She could no longer feel her muliebria. The vaginal orifice seemed to close and the region of her genitals seemed to be enlarged. She had the sensation of possessing a penis and a scrotum. At the same time she began to show symptoms of the male voluptas.”

Talmey finished this section with the well-known cases of Murray Hall, New York politician and Nicholas de Raylan, assistant to the Russian consul in Chicago.


iv) Paraesthesia, B) Homosexuality, 4) Transvestism.

Talmey compares transvestism to homosexuality.

“In the degrees of effemination and viraginity, cross-dressing is a prominent symptom. The homosexual pathicus has naturally the impulsive desire to dress like a woman, and vice versa, the Lesbian woman longs to dress like a man. Still, cross-dressing is a pathological entity by itself. Homosexuality is a morbid sex state of gross somatic experiences. … Transvestism, on the other hand, is a sexo-esthetic inversion of pure artistic imitation. Hence it occurs mostly in artists and in men of letters. … Transvestism is more in harmony with the basal esthetic demands. The patient harbors exalted ideas and is striving to secure artistic enjoyment in the appreciation of the beautiful. The attraction is in the mind and has nothing to do with the sex-organs.” He then discusses the same five examples as in his 1913 paper. Talmay concludes the section with his explanation of transvestism: “The longings for cross-dressing in our cases may be best explained, that the feminine strain, normally found in every male, exists here in a greatly exaggerated form. Every normal woman attributes an exaggerated value to clothes and, Narcissus-like, is more or less enamored with the female body.* The same exaggerated value to female clothes is attributed by the male transvestites. The female transvestite, on the other hand, thinks of clothes more or less as men do. Yet, the male strain in her, being a morbid phenomenon, dressing is of more importance to her than it is to the normal man.”

In the associated footnote he gives his explanation of female sexuality:

“The female body has a sexually stimulating effect upon woman. The pride of the female, says Weininger (Sex and Character, p. 201), is something quite peculiar to herself, something foreign even to the most handsome man, an obsession of her own body, a pleasure which displays itself even in the least handsome girl, by admiring herself in the mirror, by stroking herself and by playing with her own hair, but which comes to its full measure only in the effect that her body has on man. Woman desires to feel that she is admired physically. The normal woman regards her body as made for the stimulation of the man's sensations. This complex emotion forms the initial stage of her own pleasure. The female body has hence a greater exciting effect upon women than the male body has upon men. Female nudity produces a greater impression upon her than the male body ever does. … The same emotions are evoked in woman at the sight of female clothes. Woman takes it for granted that her clothes, just as her body, have an erotic effect upon the male. Hence female clothes awaken in women a complex emotion akin to the sight of the female body. Woman becomes sexually excited by her own clothes. For this reason clothes are to woman of the greatest importance. The desire for beautiful clothes is an irradiation of the sex instinct. The purpose of dress is the attraction through covering. For the parts covered are rendered more conspicuous.”

• Bernard Simon Talmey. Woman; A Treatise on the Normal and Pathological Emotions of Feminine Love. New York: The Stanley Press Corporation, 1906.
• Bernard Simon Talmey. Genesis; A Manual for the Instruction of Children in Matters Sexual, for the Use of Parents, Teachers, Physicians and Ministers. New York: The Practitioners' Pub. Co, 1910.
• Bernard Simon Talmey. Neurasthenia Sexualis; a Treatise on Sexual Impotence in Men and in Women; For Physicians and Students of Medicine. New York: The Practitioners ́publishing co, 1912.
• B.S. Talmey. “Transvestism: A Contribution to the study of the Psychology of Sex”. New York Medical Journal, 99, 1914: 362-8. Partially reprinted in Jonathan Katz. Gay/Lesbian Almanac. Harper & Row. 1983: 344-8.
• Bernard Simon Talmey. Love, a Treatise on the Science of Sex-Attraction: For the Use of Physicians and Students of Medical Jurisprudence. New York: Practitioners' Pub. Co, 1915. Online at: http://archive.org/details/lovetreatiseonsc00talm.
• C. J. Bulliet. Venus Castina: Famous Female Impersonators Celestial and Human. New York: Covici 308 pp 1928. New York: Bonanza Books. 1956: 8-11.
• Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Warner Books Edition 1977/PDF: 51/23,29.
• Bram Dijkstra. Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-De-Siècle Culture. Oxford University Press, 1986: 69, 77, 101, 116, 153, 224, 249, 261, 297. 304, 356.
• Bram Dijkstra. Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Culture. OWL Book, 1998: 201-2, 210-11.
• Peter Boag. Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011: 59-63, 73.

------------------------------

Note Talmey’s distinction between Perversity and Perversion. The latter is congenital and imperative. The former is situational and can be terminated: e.g. prison homosexuality or ‘gay for pay’.

Talmey cites and quotes the sexologists, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Albert Moll, Havelock Ellis but never Magnus Hirschfeld.

In turn, Talmey is never cited or quoted by George Henry, also of New York, who wrote on gay and trans persons in the 1940s. Talmey and Henry are certainly the major US writers on the topic in the first half of the 20^th century. There is only a one-line mention of Talmey, and none at all of Henry, in Benjamin’s The Transsexual Phenomenon. Later sexologists ignore both Talmey and Henry. Of the three best known histories of transgender in the US, each of which has time to discuss German antecedents, Joanne Meyerowitz ignores Talmey completely and has two lines about Henry, and Susan Stryker and Genny Beemyn ignore them both.

Note that 47 years before Virginia Prince founded the Hose and Heel Club in 1960, there was a club for heterosexual transvestites in New York where androphilic transvestites were not welcome. Talmey seems to anticipate Prince etc by discussing gay transvestites separately in the Homosexuality section – although Prof M does appear in the Tranvestite section.

Note that 30 years before Louise Lawrence’s pioneering networking in the 1940s, Otto Spengler was doing something similar.

The story of the person, who gave birth to six children and then at 36 had an apoplectic stroke and started changing into a man, sounds odd and we would want to know more (but neither chromosomal nor hormonal analysis was available in Krafft-Ebing’s time), but see also Peter Stirling who gave birth and then changed spontaneously.

When Talmey was writing the concept of ‘Invert’ was strong. Thus he assumes that all gay men and lesbians are to some degree transvestic. Similarly in Germany, Hirschfeld regarded both gays and transvestites as ‘sexual intermediaries’. Hirschfeld however was strongly opposed by masculine gay men who were in no way effeminate.

Bulliet, published in 1928, writes: “Dr. Bernard S. Talmey, of New York, … names the impulse ‘transvestism’”. Successful words have many parents.

“Transvestism, on the other hand, is a sexo-esthetic inversion of pure artistic imitation. Hence it occurs mostly in artists and in men of letters.” -- yeah, right. This is an opinion much harder to hold in the 21^st century.


As I said, Talmey’s work on gender variance is almost universally ignored.  If you google his name you will find a lot of books etc that take quotes, often out of context, from his first book, Woman; A Treatise on the Normal and Pathological Emotions of Feminine Love.  I have included Bram Dijkstra’s books in the bibliography as probably the best of such books.  

Bernard S. Talmey (1862 - 1926) gynecologist, sexologist–part 1.

Bernard Talmud (later Talmey) was raised in Poland and Germany and graduated in medicine at the University of Munich in 1892, as did his brother Max Talmey (1868 – 1941) two years later. Max acted as doctor to the Einstein family, and Max mentored the young Albert Einstein, lending him various science books. Bernard and Max emigrated to the United States in 1894. Bernard became a gynecologist at the Yorkville Hospital, New York City. Max became a ophthalmologist at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City,

In 1906 Bernard Talmey published Woman; A Treatise on the Normal and Pathological Emotions of Feminine Love, wherein he investigated whether the degree or the intensity of the amatory emotions is different in men and women, by investigating its pathologies: “If it can be shown that the same pathological entities of the sex-instinct are found in men and women, the inference is justified that the normal emotions are also the same or similar in both sexes”.

In 1910, he published Genesis; A Manual for the Instruction of Children in Matters Sexual, for the Use of Parents, Teachers, Physicians and Ministers, where he discussed the evolution of sex in plant and animal.

In 1912 Neurasthenia Sexualis; a Treatise on Sexual Impotence in Men and in Women; For Physicians and Students of Medicine, he discussed the anatomy and physiology of the male organs of generation. The chapter on pathology dealt only with impotence.

By 1913 Talmey had collected five transvestites whom he regarded as patients, and presented a paper, first to the New York Society of Medical Jurisprudence in December 1913, and then published the next year in the New York Medical Journal.

1. The first patient was S, whom we now know to be Otto Spengler. 
2. The second was then 62. He had been frequently dressed as a girl by his mother, until at age 15 this was forbidden by his father. He left and went west where he worked in construction, became a sheriff and a justice of the peace, and still retained a passion for female attire. He is featured in the opening pages of chapter 2 of Peter Boag’s Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past. 
3. The third, known as Blanche/Harold had, through tantrums, managed to stay in female attire until age 18. Blanche was then 32, and always wore female underwear, and at home always dressed female. 
   
4. The fourth was a retired female impersonator, “Prof M.”, then 62, who had also been dressed by his mother in girls’ clothes. He lived in Dayton, Ohio, and in April 1905 was arrested for cross-dressing, and at other times had been threatened with mob violence. “A number of years previously he was strong sexually and fond of the opposite sex. Nowadays he cares more for his own sex.“ 
   
5. The fifth was an artist who hoped to abandon dressing in female clothing after his then forthcoming marriage.

Talmey’s major work is Love, a Treatise on the Science of Sex-Attraction: For the Use of Physicians and Students of Medical Jurisprudence published in 1915.  We will examine this in detail in Part II.

--------------------------------------

Talmey commented on Prof M.:  “This case throws a certain light upon the psyche of the woman impersonators.  They do not become effeminate through the long habit of masquerading — that would be confounding cause and effect—but their innate anomaly leads them to choose impersonating as a profession. A normal man would hardly select such a profession as his life work”. 

Boag refers to Patient 2 as ‘M’.   This is confusing as Talmey refers to Patient 4 as “M”.  

Curt Thomalla (1890 – 1939) doctor, writer

Thomalla, from Silesia, studied law and then medicine at the universities of Lausanne, Kiel, Würzburg, Erlangen und Breslau.

A volunteer in the War, he was severely injured in 1914. He passed the state exam in Breslau (now Wrocław in Poland) and worked at the city's Nervenklinik specialising in neurology and psychiatry.

From 1918 to 1925 he was head of the medical film archive at the UFA film studio in Potsdam. From 1924-6 he worked as a physician and as freelance writer, and was interested in the ideas of Eugene Steinach, rejuvenation and internal glands.

In 1924 he wrote for Uhu, the Berlin women's periodical, an article “The Riddle of the Glands: The mysterious Effects of Inner Secretion”, where he argued that 'sex intermediates' are the result of inner secretions, rather than of degeneracy. However he regarded this as a disease to be fixed by glandular means. The article was accompanied by a photograph of four 'women' who lived and worked as male, and had acquired police permits to do so.

Uhu, 1924, reprinted p104 in Sutton

From 1926 Thomalla worked for the German state as a popular educator on hygiene. In 1929 he was head of the press office of the association of German professional associations.

After the Nazi takeover he worked as a speaker in the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. In 1936 he published a book on eugenics with the then-required anti-Semitic aspects.

In 1939, feeling in disagreement with the government, he and his secretary both gassed themselves.

• Curt Thomalla. “Ein psychiatrisch-neurologisches Filmarchiv. Zeitschrift für die gesamte” Neurologie und Psychiatrie, 45, 1/2, 1921.
• Curt Thomalla. “Hygiene und soziale Medizin im Volksbelehrungsfilm”. Zeitschrift für Medizinalbeamte und Krankenhausärzte 21/23, ss. 589-593, 606-610, 631-635, 1922.
• Curt Thomalla. “Steinachs Forschungen und Theorien im Lehrfilm”. Zeitschrift für ärztliche Fortbildung 20, ss. 52-56, 1923.
• Curt Thomalla. “Vom medizinischen Lehrfilm zum Steinach-Film”. Der Bildwart (1), ss. 170-171, 1923.
• Curt Thomalla. “Medizin und Arzt im Spielfilm”. Der Kinematograph, 805, 1923.
  
• Curt Thomalla, “Das Drüsenrätsel: Das geheimnisvolle Wirkung der inneren Sekretion,” Uhu, no. illeg., November 1924, 82-91, 142-44.
• Curt Thomalla. Innere Sekretion; Probleme der Blutdrüsen und Verjüngung, 1925.
  
• Curt Thomalla. “The Sterilization Law in Germany”. The Scientific American 126, September 1934.
• Curt Thomalla. Gesund sein – Gesund bleiben. Ein volkstümliches Hausbuch für den gesunden und kranken Menschen. Berlin: FW Peters, 1936
  
• Katie Sutton. The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany. Berghahn Books, 2011: 103-4.
  
• Andreas Killen. Scientific and Medical Films in the 1920s-1930s. PDF

DE.Wikipedia

Charles L. Ihlenfeld (1937 – ) sexologist, psychiatrist

Charles Ihlenfeld came from West Virginia, where his father was a prominent attorney and then mayor.  He graduated from the New York School of Medicine, and was working in 1969 as an internist with an interest in endocrinology when a friend arranged an introduction to the then 84-year-old Dr Harry Benjamin who asked him to cover the office during the summer while Benjamin was in San Francisco. Ihlenfeld learned on the job, and stayed on.

"I was awed by the courage of people who were willing to risk losing everything to gain the truth of their own lives".

 He came out as gay in 1973. Benjamin was surprised but then became supportive.

1975 was Benjamin's last summer in San Francisco. He developed facial herpes, and was hospitalized for a few days with what was probably mild encephalitis. Ihlenfeld continued the practice after Benjamin's retirement for another year, until 1976 when he took a psychiatric residency in the Bronx, and Jeanne Hoff took over the practice. This disappointed Benjamin who had considered Ihlenfeld to be his successor. Benjamin, who had learned to be wary of psychoanalysts, was further concerned in that Ihlenfeld had chosen a program with a strong analytic tradition, and old-fashioned ideas about homosexuality. Ihlenfeld told his Director of Residency Training that he was gay and the other was somewhat puzzled and replied: "You mean that there are gay psychiatrists?"

That same year Ihlenfeld was interviewed in The National Observer. He spoke of how working with Benjamin's patients had helped him come to terms with his own sexuality. And how he felt the need to understand more about his patients. He spoke of how he no longer considered the idea of a female mind in a male body to be a satisfactory explanation, and that there were psychologic issues that hormones and surgery did not reach, which might resurface in later years. The newspaper article came with a sidebar which ended with:

“Whatever surgery did, it did not fulfill a basic yearning for something that is difficult to define. This goes along with the idea that we are trying to treat superficially something that is much deeper."

This was quoted twice in Janice Raymond's Transsexual Empire, 1979, and has been often copied in feminist criticism. She hailed his leaving as "a significant defection from the transsexual empire".

The same year as Raymond's book, Ihlenfeld spoke to Garrett Oppenheim's Confide group:

"Should every patient who comes in asking for hormone therapy receive it? I used to feel that most of them should, but now I look at this request a bit more critically. … Perhaps my psychiatric training has made me more conservative. ... 80 percent of the patients who want to change their sex shouldn't do it. ... There is too much unhappiness among people who have had the surgery. ... Too many of them end as suicides. ... The transsexual candidate has been described as the only patient who diagnoses himself and prescribes his own treatment".

Ihlenfeld settled on the North Fork of Long Island with his lover, also a psychiatrist. He continued to see transsexuals for evaluation and counseling, and continued to prescribe hormones and surgery when they seemed appropriate.

"Cross gender feelings strong enough to bring a person to reassignment are probably fixed in personality far too early and far too firmly to reconcile any other way."

Ihlenfeld and his lover were married in Massachusetts in 2008 after several decades together, when the law was changed.

His patients have included Rupert Raj, M.T. Diane Kearny, Renee Richards, Ron Rigsbee. He appeared in court to support the law cases of M.T. and Paula Grossman.

*Not the Ohio prosecuting attorney.

• Charles L. Ihlenfeld. "When a woman becomes a man." Sexology, 1972.
• Harry Benjamin & Charles L. Ihlenfeld, “Transsexualism". American Journal of Nursing, 73, March 1973: 460.
• Charles L. Ihlenfeld. "Thoughts on the treatment of transsexuals." Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy 6.1, 1973: 63-69.
• D. Greene interviews Charles L, Ihlenfeld. "A Doctor Tells Why He'll no Longer Treat Transsexuals". The National Observer, October 16, 1976: 14.
• Janice G. Raymond The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-male. Boston: Beacon Press. 1979: 184, 208n33, 212n4.
  
• Garrett Oppenheim. "Ihlenfeld Cautions on Hormones". Transition, 1979. Online at: http://lvtgw.jadephoenix.org/Info_htm/Herbal_G/ginko_b2.htm.
  
• Charles Ihlenfeld. "A Memorial for Harry Benjamin." Archives of Sexual Behavior 17.1, Feb. 1988: 1-33.
  
• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press. 363 pp 2002: 214, 217, 249, 251, 267.
  
• Charles L. Ihlenfeld, MD. "Harry Benjamin and Psychiatrists".  Journal of Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy 8.1-2, 2004: 147-151. Reprinted in Ubaldo Leli & Jack Drescher. Transgender Subjectivities: A Clinician's Guide. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Medical Press, 2004: 147-152.
  

KINSEY INSTITUTE    NYU

Garrett Oppenheim (1911 - 1995) writer, hypnotist, counselor, sexologist

Garrett or James Jr was the son of James Oppenheim more (1882 – 1932) poet, novelist and Jungian.

Garrett, a polio survivor, was a poet associated with the surrealist school in the 1930s and a short-story writer from the 1930s-50s. He married in 1947 and became a journalist for the New York Herald-Tribune, which led to him becoming acquainted with Dr Leo Wollman.

The Herald-Tribune ceased publication in 1966. Oppenheim became a hypnotist and sex counselor, operating from his home in Tappan, New York. For a while he was the associate editor of Venture, a slick travel magazine. He was then employed by Medical Economics Magazine in New Jersey to help develop a cassette tape program for medical professionals on such subjects as malpractice and office management.

Oppenheim and his second wife Fae Robin founded an organization called “Confide Consulting Service” - later "Confide Personal Counseling Services, Inc". Clients would phone their recording machine to recite their problems for up to 20 minutes, or send in a cassette tape, and get back a six or seven page reply suggesting a solution. The price was $25 ($119 in today's money). Confide became known as specializing in transvestites and put out a 54-minute cassette on the subject giving advice on hormones, make up and much else ($12=$57 in today's money). They had sold 100 by August 1974 "half of them have been to doctors and therapists". The tape concludes: "Our most valuable piece of advice for transvestites is enjoy!" Confide also published a newsletter, Transition, specifically for transvestites and transsexuals.

In 1974 Garrett told the Village Voice:

"My father was a psychoanalyst, and I've spent most of my life writing about doctor-patient relationships. In the course of my research, wandering around hospitals and talking with people in the profession, I discovered that I have a knack for counseling. Maybe it's because I had polio, but people always tended to open up to me. … There's one index to our effectiveness. We've advised more than 500 cases, and only one person asked for his fee to be returned. As it turned out, he sent back our check a week later. … Fifteen to 20 per cent of our cases were transvestites. And what they told us didn't match what the textbooks told us. We subsequently found that many TVs simply don't go to doctors."

Charles Ihlenfeld arranged for Oppenheim to have an interview with then 89-year old Harry Benjamin, who took a shine to Oppenheim and agreed (as he did for many transsexual and transvestite groups) to be listed on it’s board of directors. Oppenheim was then able to get Richard Green, John Money and Charles Ihlenfield to likewise agree.

Lynda Frank, a devout Princian ("In 2002, I escorted her [Virginia Prince] for three days at the IFGE Convention in Philadelphia and was overwhelmed with her enthusiasm, intelligence and willingness to help anyone who sought her out"), discovered Lee Brewster's Mardi Gras Emporium via an advertisement in the Village Voice, and purchased Prince's The Transvestite and His Wife. Frank's wife, who worked at a crisis hotline discovered Leo Wollman. Later Frank visited Wollman, was diagnosed as a transvestite and referred to Oppenheim's group. Eventually Frank joined the group which consisted of "transsexuals, male-to-females and female-to-males, and a few transvestites, one was Roger Peo … We were with this group about two years. For the first six months I attended by myself, during which time Garrett's wife, Fay, took me into New York City to Muriel Olive's Boutique to buy a padded girdle and a bra".

Around 1980 Oppenheim declared himself to be a psychotherapist with a PhD from the then new Columbia Pacific University, an unaccredited distance learning school in California (which was closed by court order in 2000 and it is misdemeanor in some US States to cite its degrees on a resume.) He opened an office in Hartsdale, NY. Dr Oppenheim referred trans persons to Leo Wollman, Diane Miller, MD, and endocrinologist Walter Futterweit, MD, both working on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.


In 1985, Dick Teresi & Kathleen McAuliffe wrote an article for Omni magazine on the topic of male pregnancy:

"Garrett Oppenheim, a psychotherapist in Tappan, New York, says male pregnancy 'would be the most magnificent breakthrough since the sex-change program came into effect'. As director of Confide-personal Counseling Services, Inc., Oppenheim evaluates and counsels those who apply for a sex change, to help them decide whether they should undergo the necessary hormonal treatment and surgery. There are approximately 20,000 transsexuals in the world today. 'And most transsexuals want to experience womanhood in all its facets', Oppenheim says." (Teresi p181).

In 1986 Oppenheim published a paper, "The snowball effect of the 'real-life test' for sex reassignment" in which he argued against the assumption that a real-life test gives an opportunity for reversal. Rather it confirms the patient on her way.

Oppenheim was also active in past life regressions, and his prime case, mentioned in many books, is that in 1986, a woman known by the pseudonym "Monica" was regressed by Oppenheim. Monica discovered a previous existence as a man named John Ralph Wainwright who lived in the southwestern U.S. She knew that John grew up in Wisconsin, Arizona and had vague memories of brothers and sisters. As a young man he became a deputy sheriff and married the daughter of a bank president. According the Monica's "memory," John was killed in the line of duty - shot by three men he had once sent to jail - and died on July 7, 1907.

Oppenheim also used his hypnosis abilities in working with polio patients.

Garrett Oppenheim died in New Jersey at age 83.

*Not the Seattle lawyer

Oppenheim's publications not including his poetry or his journalism:

• Image and Dust. New York: Priv. printed by the International Press, 1932.
  
• "Queen for a Night". All-Story Love Stories, May 16 1936.
  
• "The Goodly Portion". The Educational Portion, 2,1, 1937. "If we were once convinced of that truth, we might acquire more respect for the writers and thinkers of the past and less tendency to ridicule them shamefully for occupying a small place in our curriculum alongside of modern textbook makers who depend upon those same writers and thinkers ... "
  
• "Old Style" All-Story Love Stories, Sep 5 1936.
  
• "Reunion" All-Story Love Stories, Sep 12 1936.
  
• "The Message" All-Story Love Stories, Jun 26 1937.
  
• "The Punishing of Eddie Jungle-Spit" Liberty, May 1950, reprinted in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1951.
  
• "How to Make a Decision" Bluebook, Oct 1955.
  
• "What Youth Can Do When Grownups Help," Parents Magazine 34, March 1959: 88-89, 125;
  
• "Teen-age Drinking Can Spell Disaster". Parents' Magazine, 1961.
  
• With Fae Robin. The Male Transvestite-a Confide Cassette. N.Y.,Personal Counseling Services, 1974.
  
• (ed) Transition. Tappan NY: Confide – Personal Counseling Services, 1978.
  
• "The snowball effect of the 'real-life test' for sex reassignment". Journal of Sex Education & Therapy, 12,2, 1986:12-14.
  
• "Foreword" to Sister Mary Elizabeth. Legal Aspects of Transsexualism. J2CP Information Service, 1988. Online at: www.transgendercare.com/guidance/resources/legal_aspects_ts.htm. And at: http://heartcorps.com/journeys/everything/legal.htm.
  
• "Memorial for Harry Benjamin". Archives of Sexual Behavior, 17,1,1988: 6-9.
  
• "For whom regression therapy is not suitable". Tasso International. www.tassointernational.com/for-whom-regression-therapy-is-not-suitable.
  
• Who Were You Before You Were You?: The Casebook of a Past-Life Therapist. New York: Carlton Press, 1990.
  
• "What do I do now?" Journal of Hypnotism, 9,1, 1994.
  
• With Gwen Oppenheim. The Golden Handicap: A Spiritual Quest : a Polio Victim Asks, "Why?" and Turns His Life Around. Virginia Beach, Va: A.R.E. Press, 1993.
  

Other sources:

• John Dalmas. "Confide ...". The Evening News, Sep 25, 1972. Online at: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=heNfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=h20NAAAAIBAJ&pg=2908%2C4293361.
  
• "Scenes". The Village Voice, August 29, 1974. Online at: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=zeJLAAAAIBAJ&sjid=74sDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6232%2C3702764.
  
• Dick Teresi & Kathleen McAuliffe. ""Male Pregnancy", Omni, 8, 1985. Reprinted in Patrick D Hopkins (ed), Sex/Machine: Readings in Culture, Gender, and Technology. Indiana University Press, 1999: 180-1.
  
• Lynda Frank. "Pilgrimage" in J. Ari Kane-Demaios & Vern L. Bullough (eds) Crossing Sexual Boundaries: Transgender Journeys, Uncharted Paths Prometheus Books, 2006: 248-269.
  
• Stephen Wagner. "The Mystery of Past Life Recall". About.Com Paranormal Phenomena. http://paranormal.about.com/od/reincarnation/a/The-Mystery-Of-Past-Life-Recall.htm.
  

Leo Wollman (1914 – 1998) gynecologist, hypnotist, sexologist.

Original March 2007; revised October 2013; 1st paragraph revised December 2019 with information from Wollman's step-granddaughter.

Leo Wollman lived almost his entire life on Mermaid Avenue, Coney Island, Brooklyn, except for his medical education in Edinburgh. He married in 1936, and he and his wife, Eleanor, frequently travelled back and forth to Scotland for a few years. Eleanor sailed home in September 1939 as war broke out, but Leo stayed in Scotland until 1942. ++They had two sons Arthur (1943 - 2019) who became a urologist in San Diego, and Bryant who became a mailman.  Arthur in turn has a son who also became a doctor. In the mid-1950s Eleanor died, and Leo remarried and adopted his new wife's daughter.

Leo became a gynecologist at the Maimonides Medical Center, Brooklyn. He was also a hypnotist and interested in psychosomatic dentistry. In some newspaper accounts he is described as a psychiatrist.

Wollman (right) at a Hypnosis Conference in Mainz, 1970.

On July 31, 1961 Wollman, in his role as a hypnotist, appeared in a television discussion re the use of the then new pacemaker. He was head of the New York Society of Clinical and Experimental Hypnotism.

In the mid-1960s Wollman became an associate of Harry Benjamin, and they shared a practice. Wollman started running a group session where transsexuals could meet and exchange ideas and experiences. He also used hypnosis to determine whether a transsexual was authentic.

In Benjamin's 1966 book, The Transsexual Phenomenon, Wollman is described as a "noted gynecologist and student of hypnosis". He is quoted and what he said is found at the bottom of this article.

In December 1966 Dr Carl Coppolino, anesthesiologist and hypnotist, was on trial for the murder of his lover's husband. The now jilted lover claimed that Coppolino hypnotized her into injecting her husband with succinylcholine which caused a heart attack. Leo Wollman testified that under hypnosis:

"It's impossible to have a subject do something they feel they are morally unable to do". 

Coppolino was acquitted, but four months later he was convicted of murdering his own wife by an injection of succinylcholine. He served 12½ years.

WBI Boston 1968 with Dr Leo Wollman.  Presenter Bob Kennedy

In 1968 Wollman was phoned from Toronto by Dianna Boileau, and arranged for a local doctor to prescribe female hormones for her. Also that year he was in the WBI Boston television channel with Virginia Prince. On September 19, 1969 he was on the Phil Donahue television show to discuss transsexual operations.

Wollman contributed a paper on post-operative care of the neo-vagina to Richard Green & John Money's 1969 book, Transsexualism and Sex-Reassignment.

In 1970 he flew up to Toronto for the release of Dianna Boileau's autobiography. He rather dominated the event and predicted that transsexual women would be able to become pregnant within 10 years. At this time he claimed 110 sex change patients with only one case of regret. He estimated 5 male-to-females for each female-to-male.

In the early 1970s he was President of The American Society of Psychosomatic Dentistry and Medicine.

Lyn Raskin's 1971 autobiography, Diary of a Transsexual uses the pseudonym "Dr Len Williams" for Dr Wollman. He sent her to Dr Burou in Casablanca for surgery. A few years later Wollman's patients were having surgery in the New York area, at Yonkers Hospital, by plastic surgeons Benito Rish and David Wesser. Eventually both Rish and Wesser had their licenses lifted by the state medical board, although their work with transsexuals was not cited as the reason.

Another associate of Wollman was Garrett Oppenheim, a cis-heterosexual who had previously been a journalist on the New York Herald-Tribune. He then became a hypnotist and sex counselor. He and his wife sold counseling cassette-tapes, ran an organization for transsexuals called Confide, and published an associated newsletter called Transition.

In 1971 the Erickson Educational Foundation sponsored the production of a 28-minute documentary, I am Not This Body, which featured a discussion in the EEF office between Zelda Suplee, Leo Wollman, two trans women and actress Pamela Lincoln (who was purportedly seeking information about transsexuals). Suplee and Wollman had previously known each other through their mutual interest in hypnosis.  Around this time Suplee introduced Wollman to the exploitation film director, Doris Wishman, who was interested in making a film about transsexuals.

In 1973 Wollman published an article advocating female circumcision as a cure for frigidity.

Wollman was an associate of Michael Salem, the cis-heterosexual who ran a boutique in New York and a mail-order service for transvestites. Wollman advised re colors and lingerie styles. He also helped Salem write his 1973 book How to Impersonate a Woman. He then sent copies to what he called "the clown-transvestites": Milton Berle, Tony Curtis, Johnny Carson, Flip Wilson, George Burns, Jack Benny.

In 1977 Renee Richards was obliged to go to court to establish her right to play in women's tennis. Both her surgeon Dr Roberto Granato and Dr Wollman testified on her behalf. Wollman stated that he had treated over 1,700 transsexual patients and that

"It is his view that Dr. Richards should be considered a female... despite the fact that the chromosomes may appear to be that of a man, if she has the external genital appearance, the internal organ appearance, gonadal identity, endocrinological makeup and psychological and social development of a female, she would be considered a female by any reasonable test of sexuality."

From 1971 Wollman had been working with Doris Wishman (1912 – 2001) one of the very few female exploitation film directors of her generation. Their joint project/film first came out as Adam or Eve, 1971, but was later recut with additional footage and released in 1978 under the title Born A Man... Let Me Die A Woman. Cinematography was done by Casa Susanna regular Andrea Susan Malick.  It was advertised, misleadingly, as: 'All true! All real! See a man become a woman before your eyes'. In a cross between a documentary and pornography, Dr Wollman, who reminds us of his MD, his PhD and his DD, shows us scenes where a transsexual explains that she will get a womb transplant and have a baby; dramatized scenes where trans women pick up men for sex; gory close-ups of vaginoplasty; dramatized suicides and self-castrations. Incorrect biological explanations are given, e.g. that homosexuality and transsexuality are both the result of incorrect development of glands. The film contains footage from Wishman's previous films, and has continuity errors. The credits are misleading: only some of the real trans women are listed; porn star Harry Reems (who did not know that he was in the film) is listed as Tim Long; porn star Vanessa del Rio is not listed at all. It was banned in the UK. Kleinhans argues that the reels are in the wrong order, and that Wishman "constantly undermines the doctor's discourse of tolerance with footage that presents transsexuals as freaks and staged episodes that exploit transsexualism for sensationalistic effect". However there is no record of Wollman disassociating himself from the film or complaining about Wishman's final cut. Wishman was quoted in Psychotronic Video 26.:

Wollman in Let me Die a Woman

“I found the transsexuals to be very sad and lonely people. Because of that, I paid them more than anyone else, to ease my conscience, I guess. I didn’t want to think that I was exploiting them, although I really wasn’t. They were all very happy to be in the film.” 

There is a paperback tie-in to the film by MJ Lucas (who may be either Wishman or Wollman).

In 1979 Rosalyne Blumenstein, then 15 but claiming to be 16, took the bus and train out to Mermaid Avenue to see who she describes as "a sweet little old doctor" who gave her a bottle of Provera. However she never went back.

Along with Paul A. Walker, Ph.D., Jack C. Berger, MD., Richard Green, MD., Donald R. Laub, M.D., Charles L. Reynolds, Jr., M.D., Wollman was a co-author of the first Harry Benjamin Standards of Care which was approved at the Sixth International Gender Dysphoria Symposium, San Diego,California, February 1979.

Dr Leo Wollman died in 1998, aged 84. His widow donated his papers and other material to Transy House which established the Wollman Archives of Transgender History and Culture.

The 1999 article by Teresi & McAuliffe claims that Wollman treated 2,800 transsexuals, and that he hormonally primed one of his patients to breastfeed his own child. The patient was still with her wife and they took turns feeding the child.


*Not the economist

Wollman's publications:

• "Hypnosis in Weight Control". American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 4,3,1962: 177-180. DOI:10.1080/00029157.1962.10401892.
  
• "How Prenancy Tests Work". Sexology: Modern Guide to Sex Knowledge, 31, March 1964.
  
• "Hypnosis for the Surgical Patient". American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 7,1,1964: 83-5. DOI: 10.1080/00029157.1964.10402397.
  
• "A Brief Note on the Origin of the Psychoprophylactic Method (PPM) in Obstetrics." American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 7.1,1964: 85-86.
  
• Quoted in Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. New York: Julian Press, 1966. New York: Warner Books Edition 1977: 161-2 Online at: www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/ECR6/benjamin and at www.mut23.de/texte/Harry%20Benjamin%20-%20The%20Transsexual%20Phenomenon.pdf.
  
• "Brief statistics on female adolescents." Journal of Sex Research 2.1,1966: 25-26.
  
• "In contrast to the schizoid, the normal individual maintains his unity and identity through the strength of his impulses and feelings. The difference in the two conditions can be contrasted diagrammatically in terms of impulse formation and muscular activity. Collapse of schizoid rigidity plunges the individual into a schizophrenic." Fertility and Sterility 17.2,1966: 273-277.
  
• "Transsexualism: Gynecological Aspects".  Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, 29: 463, 1967. doi: 10.1111/j.2164-0947.1967.tb02280.x
  
• "Surgery for the Transsexual." Journal of Sex Research 3.2,1967: 145-147.
  
• "Abstracts of Current Literature." American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 11.2, 1968: 132-134.
  
• "Office Management of the Postoperative Male Transsexual". In Richard Green & John Money (ed). Transsexualism and Sex-Reassignment. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1969.
  
• "Hooded Clitoris: Preliminary Report". Journal of American Psychosomatic Dentistry and Medicine,20, 1973: 3-4.
• "Female Circumcision". Journal of American Psychosomatic Dentistry and Medicine, 20, 1974: 130-1.
  
• "The Effect of Deviate Behavior on a Marriage". Osteopathic Physician, 41,5, 1974: 111.
  
• "Nonverbal communication for prevention of mental illness." Journal of the American Society of Psychosomatic Dentistry & Medicine, 22,2,1975: 51.
• With Paul A. Walker, Ph.D., Jack C. Berger, MD., Richard Green, MD., Donald R. Laub, M.D. & Charles L. Reynolds, Jr., M.D. Standards of Care: The hormonal and surgical sex reassignment of gender dysphoric persons. The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, Inc. 1979. Online at: www.genderpsychology.org/transsexual/hbsoc_1990.html.
  
• With Erwin DiCyan, George Goldberg & Arthur Hastings. "Holistic approaches to oral health and dentistry". Health for the whole person: the complete guide to holistic medicine (1980): 333.
  
• With Laurence Lotner. Eating Your Way to a Better Sex Life: The Complete Guide to Sexual Nutrition. Pinnacle Books, 1983.
  

Other sources:

• "Coppolino May Take Stand: The Defense Rests". The Norwalk Hour, Dec 14, 1966. Online at: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1898&dat=19661214&id=TuogAAAAIBAJ&sjid=qW8FAAAAIBAJ&pg=4953,3405220.
  
• Kathleen Rex. "Canada's first sex-swapper asks for understanding: Doctor sees day coming when transplants will enable fathers to become mothers". The Globe and Mail. Sept 16, 1970.
  
• Lyn Raskin. Diary of a Transsexual, Olympia Press, 1971.
  
• Dianna as told to Felicity Cochrane, with an Introduction by Leo Wollman. Behold, I Am a Woman. New York: Pyramid Books, 1972.
  
• Michael Salem. How to Impersonate a Woman; A Handbook for the Male Transvestite. NY: M. Salem Enterprises, 1973.
  
• Jack O'Brien.  Schenectady Gazette, 2 Nov 1973
• "Richards v. US Tennis Assn". Leagle, August 16, 1977. www.leagle.com/decision/197780693Misc2d713_1654.
  
• Doris Wishman (dir). Born A Man... Let Me Die A Woman. Hosted by Leo Wollman, with trans persons Leslie, Lisa Carmelle, Deborah Harte, Ann Zordi, and porn stars Harry Reem, Angel Spirit and Vanessa del Rio. Scientific and medical advisor: Dr Leo Wollman. US 78 mins 1978.
  
• M.J. Lucas. Let Me Die A Woman: The Why and How of Sex-Change Operations. New York: Rearguard Productions. 1978. The book that goes with the film. Leo Wollman consulted.
  
• Thomas Waugh. "Medical Thrills: Born A Man... Let Me Die A Woman". The Body Politic, 49, Dec 1978-Jan 1979: 41-2. Reprinted in The Fruit Machine: Twenty Years of Writings on Queer Cinema. Durham (N.C.): Duke university press, 2000.: 72-3.
• Dick Teresi & Kathleen McAuliffe. ""Male Pregnancy"Omni, 8, 1985. Reprinted in Patrick D Hopkins (ed), Sex/Machine: Readings in Culture, Gender, and Technology. Indiana University Press, 1999. 
• F. Hodges. "A Short History of the Institutionalization of Involuntary Sexual Mutilation in the United States" in George C. Denniston & Marilyn Fayre Milos (eds). Sexual Mutilations; A Human Tragedy. Springer, 1997: 32.
  
• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press, 2002: 214, 216, 222, 227, 252.
  
• Rosalyne Blumenstein,. Branded T. 1st Books Library, 2003: 70. 
• Michael J. Bowen.  " 'StrangerHer': The Peculiar Saga of Let Me Die a Woman".  Booklet included in Synapse DVD release of Let Me Die a Woman, 2005. 
• Tania Modleski "Women's Cinema as Counterphobic Cinema: Doris Wishman as the Last Auteur"; Chuck Kleinhans "Pornography and Documentary: Narrating the Alibi" in Jeffrey Sconce. Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste. Duke University Press, 2007:60-2, 112-4, 119.
• SJ Parker. Emails to Zagria, 22,28 September 2013.

EN.WIKIPEDIA   
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Apparently 'Wishman' is Doris' birth name, and there is no implication from it of her being transgender.

What should we make of Dr Leo Wollman?  Was he a second Harry Benjamin who helped almost 3,000 transsexuals on their way, or was he a hypnotist conman who associated with dubious practioners and took the patients whom Benjamin was unsure about.   Or was he a mixture of the two.  His involvement with Doris Wishman in producing a film that is best regarded as camp has not helped his reputation.  Either way there were no eulogies after his death as there were for Benjamin.   His publications are mainly short, and there is no biography of him.

The Carl Cappolino trial was in December 1966.   18 months later Robert Kennedy was assassinated, purportedly by  Sirhan Sirhan.   This assassination is frequently cited as a hypnotic subject being compelled to kill.  Philip H. Melanson's. The Robert F. Kennedy Assassination: New Revelations on the Conspiracy and Cover-Up, 1968-1991.  S.P.I. Books, 1994 actually quotes Leo Wollman on the topic as ironic background while arguing for the opposite.

Female circumcision is, among other reasons, condemned in that it, far from curing frigidity, removes the clitoris and thus any possibility of sexual pleasure.

The Wollman quote in Benjamin's The Transsexual Phenomenon is:

"Before irrevocable surgery makes the transition from male to female physically permanent, it is essential that a psychiatric evaluation and a psychological examination be done. This is indicated for the protection of the physician as well as the patient. Also a period of observation under estrogen therapy to reduce libido and tension is recommended.

It is suggested, as an avant garde technique, that hypnotic progression might be an important asset in the true evaluation of the transsexual's needs and aspirations. This projection into the future may, in some cases, dispel certain faulty attitudes and provide the faltering future female with second thoughts before definitive surgery.

Following the preparatory estrogen hormone therapy to provide breast tissue and decrease the male libidinous feelings, the transsexual embarks upon a new life immediately after the surgical removal of the external male sexual apparatus and the creation of a functional vaginal sheath. Many varying surgical procedures have been divised and are being carried out with equivocal results. However, in those cases where medicine and surgery have successfully created a phenotypic female, the "gynecological" problems of the male-to-female individual merit special attention.

For this patient, patient understanding and gentle treatment are necessary. The most frequent complaint after the operation, excluding the painful convalescence, is urinary frequency usually due to a urethro-cystitis. Antibiotic treatment will effect a rapid surcease from the disquieting urinary signs and symptoms.

A rather unusual urinary complaint is the control of the direction of the urine stream flowing from the urethra. If the urethral opening remains high, the flow will run over the rim of the toilet seat. This messy condition may be prevented by adjusting the tilt of the pelvis to permit the urine to flow into the bowl.

Another common complaint is the inability of the transsexual (now a female) to consummate sexual intercourse. This may be due to many factors. Notable among these are 1) an artistic vagina, 2) a narrow introits, 3) a thin vaginorectal septum, 4) an insufficiently lubricated vaginal canal, 5) vaginal bleeding from the apex of the freshly scarred vaginal pouch after vigorous coitus.

Treatment for these aforementioned dyspareunic states will vary with the condition found. Simple hygienic measures, proper lubrication methods, new coital techniques, dilatation by means of a Kelly aluminum dilator or a bakelite Young's dilator or a solid plastic mold worn with a flattened superior surface to protect the urethral passage, and sensible advice usually meted out to newly-weds are some of the physical and psychophysiological treatments found effective.

Above all, it is imperative for the gynecologist to regard his patient as a "female" - as "she" so rightly deserves to be considered after the lengthy and costly efforts to become a physical female. A great deal of research is indicated by the medical and psychological investigators before more consistent help can be offered to these male transsexuals, now ostensibly functioning females. The Harry Benjamin Foundation is now actively engaged in a research program of this type."