Le corps du (trans)genre : entre abstraction et réalisation

Abstract

ObjectivesThis article is concerned with the current challenges to psychoanalysis that gender and gender discordance represent. Indeed, although the term gender is increasingly used, it remains a concept that is more difficult to define and circumscribe than it first appears. MethodIn order to shed light on these issues, the important shift from the transsexual syndrome paradigm to the transgender health paradigm will be discussed. This presentation will then be supported by two clinical vignettes: that of Claudia, whose transition is part of a transsexual journey, and that of Rose, whose transition seems to be more akin to a transgender journey. ResultsClaudia's and Rose's stories allow us to illustrate a different way of apprehending the difference of the sexes: for Claudia, an abstraction that follows the contours of a difference of the sexes considered as binary, and, for Rose, a conception of gender as fluid. DiscussionFollowing these reflections, it is suggested that we return to the concept of gender in order to better define and conceptualize it, particularly in its clinical and theoretical encounter with psychoanalysis. ConclusionGender is thus considered as a frontier concept, referring to a third social body at the crossroads of personal and subjective feeling and the socio-political. In reference to narratology, gender is defined as a personal and/or collective construction aiming to give coherence to the difference of the sexes and supported by a realization through perception. Gender can be thought of as an aide to the binding of sexual excitation associated with questions relating to the anatomical difference of the sexes from a psychoanalytical point of view, which concerns both the analysand and the psychoanalyst.