The resolution of a transsexual wish in a five-year-old boy.
The brief truncated psychoanalytic treatment of a transsexual boy described in this paper demonstrates the development of transference reactions and their subsequent resolution. The analytic situation allowed this young patient to live out again his relationship with his parents in his relationship with the analyst, to recover from wishing to be a member of the female sex, and to work through his conflicted symbiosis with his mother. Carlos became able to individuate and disidentify from her into a separate male child, in order to be able to identify with, and accept, his own biological and psychological maleness. It is to be hoped that our success with this patient will encourage others to treat and study children suffering from gender identity problems via the psychoanalytic approach.
D001009:Anxiety, Castration / Q000523:psychology; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D007062:Identification, Psychological; D007207:Individuation; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D011573:Psychoanalytic Interpretation; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy; D014189:Transsexualism / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*; D014473:Unconscious, Psychology