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The Sexual Politics of Clinical Psychoanalysis and Transgender Mental Health

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dc.contributor.advisorBritzman, Deborah P.
dc.creatorWiggins, Tobias B. D.
dc.date.accessioned2019-07-02T16:16:14Z
dc.date.available2019-07-02T16:16:14Z
dc.date.copyright2019-03-21
dc.date.issued2019-07-02
dc.date.updated2019-07-02T16:16:14Z
dc.degree.disciplineGender, Feminist and Women's Studies
dc.degree.levelDoctoral
dc.degree.namePhD - Doctor of Philosophy
dc.description.abstractPerversion is derived from the Latin pervertere which means to turn around and has been broadly conceptualized as that which deviates or wavers from an original course. One could argue that the perverse is fundamentally constructed through difference; its existence is predicated upon being set up against some norm and its eccentricity is maintained through a continued refusal to adhere to the rule. This dissertation explores questions of gender difference and sexual deviance as they relate to the clinical pathologization of transgender peoples mental health. In particular, it considers how psychoanalytic theories of perversion - in their multifaceted definitions and various clinical applications - can be usefully employed to understand transphobia as it emerges throughout psychiatric institutions. In borrowing from Freuds polymorphous perversity, fetishism, perverse defense, and Lacans perverse structure, this study both contributes to and moves beyond a genealogical account of transgender peoples relationship to psychoanalysis. It uniquely considers the psychical provocations behind clinicians anxious descriptions and treatments of gender variance, as they have emerged since transsexuals nosological coinage in the early 20th century. By combining two disparate contemporary fields of study - psychoanalysis and transgender studies - this project also asks how transgender people may re-narrate their relationship to the perverse. To do so, this research investigates many under-considered objects of study, including surrealist transsexual drawings from the mid 1900s, lineages of psychiatric taxonomies, science fiction literature, contemporary transgender art installations, autoethno-pornographic transition narratives, and transgender accounts of undergoing psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Through a combination of critical historiographies, discourse analysis, content analysis, and narrative research, this dissertation contributes to a rapidly emerging non-pathological conversation about the psychic life of gender variance, both for transgender people themselves and the mental health institutions that serve them. Ultimately, it finds perversion to be quite useful as a floating signifier, as its various theoretical containers and clinical meanings are employed to deconstruct institutionalized transphobias tenacity. Furthermore, this research centers an archive of historically neglected transgender narratives on mental health as they emerge in the clinic, through case study, and in art or aesthetics. Keywords: transgender, psychoanalysis, mental health, perversion, sexuality, visual art
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10315/36282
dc.language.isoen
dc.rightsAuthor owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.
dc.subjectGLBT studies
dc.subject.keywordsTransgender
dc.subject.keywordsPsychoanalysis
dc.subject.keywordsMental health
dc.subject.keywordsPerversion
dc.subject.keywordsSexuality
dc.subject.keywordsVisual art
dc.subject.keywordsLGBTQ
dc.subject.keywordsGLBT
dc.subject.keywordsQueer theory
dc.subject.keywordsQueer
dc.subject.keywordsTrans
dc.subject.keywordsTranssexual
dc.subject.keywordsTransvestite
dc.subject.keywordsGender
dc.subject.keywordsPsychotherapy
dc.subject.keywordsAffect theory
dc.subject.keywordsTherapy
dc.subject.keywordsFreud
dc.subject.keywordsLacan
dc.subject.keywordsDefence mechanisms
dc.subject.keywordsDeviance
dc.subject.keywordsPleasure principle
dc.subject.keywordsGender reassignment surgery
dc.subject.keywordsGender affirming surgery
dc.subject.keywordsSocial determinants
dc.subject.keywordsSocial work
dc.subject.keywordsHealth
dc.subject.keywordsFeminism
dc.subject.keywordsFeminist methodology
dc.subject.keywordsStandpoint theory
dc.subject.keywordsArt
dc.subject.keywordsFilm
dc.subject.keywordsInstallation art
dc.subject.keywordsPornography
dc.subject.keywordsDSM
dc.subject.keywordsTaxonomies
dc.subject.keywordsPsychiatry
dc.subject.keywordsPsychology
dc.subject.keywordsPsychodynamic
dc.subject.keywordsChimera
dc.subject.keywordsDesire
dc.subject.keywordsIntersectionality
dc.titleThe Sexual Politics of Clinical Psychoanalysis and Transgender Mental Health
dc.typeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation

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