From the archives: Female-to-Male Transsexualism

Last week, I read Leslie Lothstein’s Female-to-Male Transsexualism: Historical, Clinical and Theoretical Issues. Lothstein uproots the myths that had grown up around female transsexualism, analyzes a series of case studies, develops theories about what has gone wrong when a female patient comes to identify with a false male ‘self,’ and provides recommendations for psychotherapeutic inquiry.

And—because the book was published in 1983—Lothstein manages to do all this in unapologetically plain language. For one thing, his patients always remain women, so he never loses track of them the way so many clinicians do these days.

Here are some of my takeaways…