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

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 transgendered 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.

"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." Walter Bockting, PhD, 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

"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." Monica McGoldrick, MSW, Director, Multicultural Family Institute, Highland Park, New Jersey

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 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.

To view an excerpt online, find the book in our QuickSearch catalog at www.HaworthPress.com.

This comprehensive book provides you with a clinical and theoretical overview of the issues facing transgendered/transsexual people and their families.

Foreword
Part One: Theoretical Understandings of Transgenderism
Introduction
The Language of Gender
Theories of Gender Dysphoria
The Families of Transgendered People
The Need of Training
Chapter One: The Transsexual Phenomenon Meets the Transexual Menance
Compassionate and Controversial Treatment of Transsexuals
The Mental Health Professional as "Gatekeeper"
Clinical Guidelines — Therapeutic Standards of Care
Chapter Two: The Legacy — Gender Variance in History
The Historical Legacy
Medical Science and Gender Variance
Chapter Three: Deconstructing Sex and Gender: Thinking Outside the Box
Four Component Parts of Identity
Deconstructing the Assumptions of Sexual Identity
Part Two: Diagnosis and Assessment
Chapter Four: Etiologies: Causes and categories
Etiological Theories: Nature and Nurture — Essentially Constructed
Categorical Classifications: If the Shoe Doesn't Fit — Force It
Chapter Five: Diagnosis and Transgenderism — The Creation of Pathology
The Power of Diagnosis
Gender as Pathological Diagnosis
Part Three: Treatment Issues
Chapter Six: Transsexual Narratives
Mental Health Issues and Transgenderism
Clients Seeking Therapy
Narratives
Chapter Seven: Transgender Emergence
Coming-Out
Transgender Emergence
Stage One — Awareness
Stage Two — Seeking Information/Reaching Out
Stage Three — Disclosure to Significant Others
Stage Four — Exploring Identity and Transition
Stage Five — Exploring Transition and Possible Body Modification
Stage Six — Integration and Pride
Chapter Eight: Family Emergence
Partners, Spouses, and Significant Others
Developmental Stages for Family Members
Families Coping with Transgenderism
TransParents See
Chapter Nine: Gender Variant 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 Ten: The Treatment of Intersex People — Time for a New Paradigm
Assigning Sex and the Modern Medical Protocols
Creating Psychosocial Emergency
Standards of Humane Treatment for Intersexed People
Index
Reference Notes Included