NEWS

Transgender Identification and Development

JoAnn Ponder, PhD

Psychoanalysis was slow to keep pace with contemporary societal views about transsexuality, and tended to pathologize non-normative and non-binary gender identifications. Hence, many analysts may not recognize the name of Lou Sullivan (1951-1991), a transman activist who was one of the first to differentiate gender identity and sexual object choice. Though he died young in the AIDS epidemic, he left a treasure trove of diaries that provide a unique historical archive: a first-person account of transsexuality begun at age 10 years before he identified as a transgender male and came out as gay, documenting a complex subjective evolution.