Psychosexual Identity Research Articles

Lack of personality pathology in Turner's syndrome: relation to cytogenetics, hormones and physique.

Follow-up of 73 patients withTurner's syndrome (XO) seen since 1953 disclosed the presence of a remarkable “inertia of emotional arousal” in the majority. All patients developed a feminine psychosexual identity. Nine of 28 adult patients were married, and two had adopted children. It is not known whether the emotional inertia is a secondary or a direct consequence of the chromosomal abnormality.

Psychologic approach to psychosexual misidentity with elective mutism: sex reassignment in two cases of hyperadrenocortical hermaphroditism.

Two cases of hyperadrenocortical fe male hermaphroditism illustrate that psy chosexual identity may differentiate inde pendently of genetic, gonadal, hormonal and morphologic sex, and also of assigned sex. One child, assigned as a boy, elected by age 12 to be reassigned as a girl. The other child, assigned as a girl, elected by age 11 to be reassigned as a boy. It was possible to overcome the psychologic handicap of their elective mutism, espe cially by the use, initially, of drawing, writing and modeling. These cases illustrate the general rule that proper weighting must be given to psychosexual differentiation and the sense of gender identity before a decision for or against sex reassignment can be valid. A sex reassignment can be success fully undertaken if it resolves incongruity between gender identity and assigned sex, or if the gender identity is ambivalently noncommittal. Otherwise sex reassign ment is contraindicated.

Progestin‐induced hermaphroditism: IQ and psychosexual identity in a study of ten girls∗∗

A study of the IQ and psychosexual identity factors in the behavior of 10 girls with progestin-induced hermaphroditism at birth is presented. All the patients were raised as female. The mean Full IQ was 125 SD 11.8 with 6 subjects scoring above 130. 9 of the 10 girls were considered tomboys according to sex-role preference tests patient interview and parent interview. The exhibition of tomboyishness did not exclude notions of eventual romance marriange childbearing and the role of housewife. Only 2 of the girls preferred careers to marriage. It was concluded that the sex typing of behavior in humans is not fixed in set patterns as it is in animal species.(AUTHORS MODIFIED)

PSYCHOLOGIC EVALUATION OF THE CHILD WITH INTERSEX PROBLEMS

Psychosexual differentiation is a function of age. Therefore, the weight to be given it in hermaphroditic sex-assignment decisions is also a function of age. Psychosexual differentiation roughly parallels language differentiation and both are dependent on social stimulation and experience. By kindergarten age the critical period has been passed and the psychosexual identity, though not fully mature, fixed. Psychosexual identity may contradict chromosomal, gonadal, or hormonal sex. It more generally agrees with the external genital morphology and the assigned sex. Rarely, psychosexual identity and assigned sex are discrepant, in which case a sex assignment is feasible in later childhood or adolescence. Otherwise, sex reassignment is for the most part contraindicated. It is not obligatory that assigned sex should agree with chromosomal or gonadal sex, but it should agree with external morphology, surgically corrected, and with hormonal sex correctly regulated at puberty.

CYTOGENETIC AND PSYCHOSEXUAL AMBIGUITY; KLINEFELTER'S SYNDROME AND TRANSVESTISM COMPARED.

<h3>Introduction</h3> There are five physical variables of sex (Money et al, 1955), namely, the chromosomal, gonadal, hormonal, internal morphologic, and external morphologic. In addition, there are two psychosocial variables, the sex of assignment and rearing and the gender role and psychosexual identity subsequently differentiated. The optimal condition of sexual differentiation, physical and psychic, is congruity of all seven variables. Such an optimum, however, is not always achieved, in which case a clinically recognizable syndrome of sexual abnormality, physical, and/or psychic, exists. One such clinical condition is Klinefelter's syndrome. The incongruity here is chromosomal. The condition may, in fact, be thought of as representing cytogenetic hermaphroditism, since the sex chromosome complement is ambiguous. The chromosome count is 47, XXY, instead of 46, XY as is typical for a male, or 46, XX as is typical for the female. Patients with Klinefelter's syndrome are phenotypic males,

Binocular rivalry of gender-significant pictures in a stereoscope

WITHIN the broad context of perception and interpersonal relations (CANTRIL(~)), there is appearing in the literature an increasing amount of experimental work on binocular rivalry with the use of a stereoscope. ENGEL@) noted that male subjects presented with an inverted and an upright male profile, one in each side of a stereoscope, reported seeing only the upright stimulus. BAGBY found that Mexicans simultaneously presented with typical Mexican and American scenes reported seeing more Mexican scenes than a corresponding group of Americans who contrarily saw more of the American scenes. DAVIS@) demonstrated different patterns of responses between a normal and a schizophrenic group when conflicting visual stimuli such as a knife fight and a baseball game were simultaneously presented. BELOFF and BELOFF(~) had subjects rate for attractiveness a composite face which resulted from the separate presentation in each half of a stereoscope of their own face and that of a stranger against a composite resulting from the presentation of two faces other than their own. UNGER and IMBODEN@) found differences between female postoperative rhinoplasty patients and nonrhinoplasty patients simultaneously presented with female preand post-operative rhinoplasty profiles. VAN DE CASTLE(~) simultaneously presented conflicting words in a stereoscope and found a correlation between the personality types of his subjects and the types of words that assumed perceptual dominance. During the past few years we have been studying prepubertal children with incongruous gender role specifically young boys who were assuming many of the behavioral characteristics of girls(s*g). With earlier stereoscopic studies as a stimulus, we became interested in the possibility of a perceptual test that might be relatively specific for psycho-sexual identity.