TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly Volume 4 (3-4): Transpsychoanalytics

This issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly profiles the transgender turn in psychoanalytic theory, and the development of what I refer to as “transpsychoanalytics.” This transition has not been easy because psychoanalytic theorists and analysts have often represented trans* subjectivity and gender variance as pathological. Sigmund Freud’s early writing on the “masculinity complex” and “penis envy,” for example, have been used to render female masculinities (Halberstam 1998) deviant. Jacques Lacan’s writing on “transsexualist jouissance” has been used to substantiate claims of trans* mental illness, and contemporary Lacanian psychoanalysts over rely on Catherine Millot’s (1989) Horsexe, a book that establishes a metonymic link between trans* feminine subjects and psychosis (Adams 2013; Chiland 2009; Morel 2011; and Shepherdson 2000).