Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and Their Families / Edition 1

by Arlene Istar Lev

Overview

Explore an ecological strength-based framework for the treatment of gender-variant clients

This comprehensive book provides you with a clinical and theoretical overview of the issues facing transgendered/transsexual people and their families. Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and Their Families views assessment and treatment through a nonpathologizing lens that honors human diversity and acknowledges the role of oppression in the developmental process of gender identity formation.

Specific sections of Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and Their Families address the needs of gender-variant people as well as transgender children and youth. The issues facing gender-variant populations who have not been the focus of clinical care, such as intersexed people, female-to-male transgendered people, and those who identify as bigendered, are also addressed.

The book examines:

• the six stages of transgender emergence
• coming out transgendered as a normative process of gender identity development
• thinking "outside the box" in the deconstruction of sex and gender
• the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as the convergence, overlap, and integration of these parts of the self
• the power of personal narrative in gender identity development
• etiology and typographies of transgenderism
• treatment models that emerge from various clinical perspectives
• alternative treatment modalities based on gender variance as a normative lifecycle developmental process

Complete with fascinating case studies, a critique of diagnostic processes, treatment recommendations, and a helpful glossary of relevant terms, this book is an essential reference for anyone who works with gender-variant people. Handy tables and figures make the information easier to access and understand.

Visit the author's Web site at http://www.choicesconsulting.com

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780789021175
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	03/02/2004
Series:	Haworth Marriage and the Family
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	500
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.38(h) x (d)

About the Author

Arlene Istar Lev, Arlene Istar Lev

Table of Contents

• Foreword
• Preface: Overview of Transgender Emergence
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The Language of Gender
• Gender Dysphoria and Etiological Theories
• The Families of Transgendered People
• The Need for Training
• Part I: Theoretical Understandings of Transgenderism
• Chapter 1. The Transsexual Phenomenon Meets the Transexual Menace
• Compassionate and Controversial Treatment of Transsexuals
• The Mental Health Professional As Gatekeeper
• Clinical Guidelines—Therapeutic Standards of Care
• Chapter 2. The Legacy: Gender Variance in History
• The Historical Legacy
• Medical Science and Gender Variance
• Chapter 3. Deconstructing Sex and Gender: Thinking Outside the Box
• Four Components of Identity
• Deconstructing the Assumptions of Sexual Identity
• Part II: Diagnosis and Assessment
• Chapter 4. Etiologies: Causes and Categories
• Etiological Theories: Nature and Nurture—Essentially Constructed
• Categorical Classifications: If the Shoe Doesn’t Fit—Force It
• Chapter 5. Diagnosis and Transgenderism: The Creation of Pathology
• The Power of Diagnosis
• Gender As Pathological Diagnosis
• Part III: Treatment Issues
• Chapter 6. Learning to Listen to Gender Narratives
• Mental Health Issues and Transgenderism
• Clients Seeking Therapy
• Transgender Narratives
• Therapist As Midwife: The Birth of Story
• Chapter 7. Transgender Emergence: A Developmental Process
• Coming Out
• Transgender Emergence
• Chapter 8. Family Emergence
• Partners, Spouses, and Significant Others
• Developmental Stages for Family Members
• Families Coping with Transgenderism
• TransParents See
• Chapter 9. Transgendered Children and Youth
• Treatment, Prevention, and Parental Rights
• Families with Gender-Variant Children
• Gender Variance and Progressive Treatments
• Transgender Emergence—Step-by-Step Maturation
• Chapter 10. The Treatment of Intersexed People: Time for a New Paradigm
• Assigning Sex and the Modern Medical Protocols
• Creating Psychosocial Emergency
• Standards of Humane Treatment for Intersexed People
• Appendix A. The International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Definition of Transsexualism
• Appendix B. Common Intersexed Conditions
• Appendix C. Letters of Recommendation for Hormones
• Glossary
• References
• Index

What People are Saying About This

Monica McGoldrick

The information contained in this book is SO IMPORTANT THAT NO CLINICIAN CAN AFFORD TO MISS IT. The book offers a clear, comprehensive, and cogent review of the history of the mental health field's thinking about sexuality and gender, and an extraordinarily thoughtful and extensive exploration of assessment and intervention issues with gender-variant people and their families. Lev's knowledge of the subject is phenomenal, and the breadth and clarity of her writing are brilliant. This book lays out an enormous amount of complex material in a highly readable and useful text. . . . BELONGS IN THE LIBRARY OF EVERY PSYCHOTHERAPIST, COUNSELOR, AND HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL.(Director, Multicultural Family Institute, Highland Park, New Jersey)

Walter Bockting

FINALLY, a book that does justice to the life-changing power of psychotherapy in the transgender coming-out process. I recommend this book to any psychotherapist called to work with transgender clients. I also recommend it to transgender individuals who might benefit from understanding how psychotherapy can play an invaluable role. COMPREHENSIVE AND PASSIONATE. . . . TERRIFIC. . . . LONG OVERDUE. (Co-editor, "Transgender and HIV: Risks, Prevention, and Care"; Assistant Professor and Coordinator, Transgender Health Services, Program in Human Sexuality, University of Minnesota Medical School)