Altered Ego
Time
magazine April 1955
ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΗ ΣΚΕΨΗ
Altered
Ego
Ever since
Danish doctors altered George (later Christine) Jorgensen to suit his inclinations
(Time, April 20, 1953), there have been more and more reports of physically
normal males asking surgeons for similar operations.
Such surgery,
prohibited in the U.S., effects no sex transformation; male sex organs are
merely removed, and hormones administered. (Entirely different in the case of
pseudohermaphrodites, whose genital organs are malformed so that they resemble
those of the opposite sex; they can be helped by surgery to become normal men
or women.)
Information
about these operations has been scant, but some U.S. doctors feel that surgeons
abroad are prompted more by pity for their patients than by facts about their
disorders.
In the
current A.M.A. Journal, University of California Psychiatrist Frederick G.
Worden and Psychologist James T. Marsh supply some of the facts about men who
confuse their sex identity. They studied a group of American men of normal male
appearance (testes, beard, etc.) who sought to lose their masculinity by
surgery. Finding: each of the men really thought that he was a woman who had
been given a man’s body by mistake.
But despite
their desire to resemble women, all the men shared “an extremely shallow,
immature and grossly distorted concept of what a woman is like socially,
sexually, anatomically and emotionally.” The investigators found no indication
that the men would be any better off as castrated males in women’s clothing:
“The idea of surgery seems to represent an escape from ... sexual impulses
rather than a wish for a female sexual life.”
Although
their varied backgrounds marked them as “unique individuals,” the men shared
many deep-rooted disturbances. Besieged by a sense of rejection, they felt that
being a woman was the only way to win recognition and maintain self-esteem.
They were undisciplined and impatient, notably in their request for surgery.
They particularly remembered childhood incidents supporting the idea that they
had been female from birth. All, to some extent, were transvestites, i.e. desired
to wear women’s clothes. They struggled against all overt signs of masculinity;
one even had his heavy, black beard burned out by electrolysis. Intense sexual
conflicts, ranging from prudery to deep feelings of guilt, were evident in all
of them. Said one: “It’s all dirty. If I could have the operations and dress in
feminine clothes, I'd feel free and clean.”
Drs. Worden
and Marsh did not discover how physically normal males acquire a distorted
perception of their sex identity. But they conclude that “the whole problem of
how human beings normally get their sense of being a male or female” is not
just a physical matter but a highly complex mind-and-body process that involves
the entire personality.
Time magazine, April 18, 1955,
[column: Medicine], p. 91.
ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΓΡΑΦΟΣ
[ ανάρτηση 12 Δεκεμβρίου 2024 :
Altered Ego
Time magazine April 1955
ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΗ ΣΚΕΨΗ ]
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