Searching for Bedrocks: Gender, Biology, and the Question of Ontology.

This paper argues that a conceptual conflation between biology and ontology has had a pervasive influence on psychoanalytic thinking about gender, particularly transgender phenomena. This has made it difficult to think about gender's relationship to the body outside of essentializing fantasies. The origins of the modern term gender and Freud's biological emphasis are addressed, followed by a more extensive engagement with contemporary psychoanalytic scholarship on trans. Finally, the paper proposes a framework for attending to gender's relationship to the body with greater nuance, turning to Freud's late drive theory to help us think in this complex area.

Transgender Children: From Controversy to Dialogue.

In March 2021, Hannah Wallerstein and Jordan Osserman facilitated a live dialogue over Zoom on the subject of transgender young people, with four psychoanalytic clinicians and thinkers. The conversation draws on short essays submitted in this section of The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child as a springboard for discussion. It has been transcribed and edited for length and clarity, and is reproduced here. Questions explored include the differences surrounding gender identity in childhood versus adulthood, the use of medical interventions for children experiencing gender dysphoria, the tension between psychoanalytic neutrality and affirmation, and the ethical stakes of working in this field.

Transgender Children: From Controversy to Dialogue.

This paper introduces the topic and unique format of the section that follows, on psychoanalytic work with transgender children. We first review the apparent impasse that characterizes our field regarding clinical work with gender diverse kids, as well as the reasons we pursued a live dialog to push thinking forward. Then, we outline the structure of the entire section, in which four contributors offer short essays, followed by a transcribed and edited version of the dialog we facilitated, which uses these essays as a starting point. We conclude with reflections on some of the themes that arise in the dialog, and implications for all of us who work in the arena of gender and young people.

If We Listen: Discussion of Diane Ehrensaft's "Listening and Learning from Gender-Nonconforming Children".

Given the absence of reliable predictor variables that differentiate between children whose gender dysphoria will desist versus those in whom it will persist into adolescence, child analysis, with its unique capacity to search beyond the manifest content of a patient's desire, potentially offers a venue from which to assess the developmental achievements that might impact a decision to support or question the utilization of puberty blockers to forestall the physical manifestations of gender. An examination of Ehrensaft's True Gender Self Therapy notes an inherent contradiction between her stated view of gender as "an aspect of self that can be altered over the course of a lifetime" and the notion of an unchanging gender self that only needs to be uncovered. The latter position veers toward an essentialist position that neglects the exploration of gender fantasies and defines gender in a manner that necessitates an environmental or medical response.