Psychiatry and genetics : psychosocial, ethical, and legal considerations / edited by Michael A. Sperber, Lissy F. Jarvik.

Date:
[1976], ©1976
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Psychiatry and genetics : psychosocial, ethical, and legal considerations / edited by Michael A. Sperber, Lissy F. Jarvik. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    50 ROBERT J. STOLLER conditioning, and explosively traumatic experiences. It is a researcher's task, in studying such disorders, to find out which sector was unduly strengthened (or weakened). In the case of transsexualism, I found these data in the powerful family dynamics. Nevertheless, we know that in animal experiments and genetic-hormonal disorders, a change in the strength of one of the other sectors also causes gender reversal. The ex¬ perimenter is tempted, therefore, to apply his solid data fromX (e.g., behavior reversal in male rats given perinatal estrogens) as an explana¬ tion for У (e.g., extreme femininity in boys). Such creative postulation can lead to the discovery that transsexualism is a paranatal hormonal disorder, but not without confirmatory data. I am approaching an idea that is simple enough and yet, because it has two parts, is apparently still too complex for acceptance; (1) Trans¬ sexualism is the result of family influences, regardless of the fact that gender identity reversal can also be produced experimentally in animals by purely biologic forces. (2) In rare cases, for reasons still not iden¬ tified, gender identity reversal can also be produced in humans by biologic forces, such as congenital hypogonadism in males, regardless of parental effects. In other words, there are two very different causes for reversal. (It is unclear to me whether the clinical pictures in these two types of gender reversals are alike; I have studied only seven pa¬ tients in depth whose gender disorder was associated with a sex disor¬ der. Two of these resembled transsexuals. The rest, while aberrant and requesting sex change, had features not found in transsexuals, e.g., foot fetishism.) The animal work gives the strongest impetus to the belief that trans¬ sexualism is biologically induced. May there not be some as yet un¬ measured hormonal influence at the root of transsexualism? * If so, the * Money has a biologic explanation that encompasses all kinds and degrees of gender reversal (pp. 251-252 '®): The etiology of transexualism though much speculated about, remains essentially unknown. . . . Whereas there are no known laboratory tests available today that show transexuals, as a group, to be consistently physically different chromo- somally, hormonally, or moфhologically, from a randomly sampled group, there also are no mental formulae or tests that show them to be consistently different in terms of psycho- dynamic history. [Since this is a refutation of my data and thesis, I miss learning more specifically why Money says it.] Such lack of discrimination may be a function of the crudeness of today's tests. It is possible, for example, that tomorrow's tests will yield