Benjaminas Burba, Aistė Dovydaitytė, Viktorija Grigaliūnienė, Raimonda Eglė Jusiūtė
Abstract
Psychosexual disorders is an area that nowadays increasingly ine-rests both scientists and clinical psychiatrists as a very important couse of plenty of psychosocial problems.
One of these disorders is transsexualism. In the current classification in Lithuania ICD-10-AM transsexualism is described as a desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex, usually accompanied by a sense of discomfort with, or inappropriateness of, one’s anatomic sex, and a wish to have surgery and hormonal treatment to make one’s body as congruent as possible with one’s preferred sex.
The term “transsexualismus” was firstly introduced by M.Hirschfled in 1923. However, then it was not clearly known the differences between tranvestitism, homosexualism and transsexualism.
In 1966 H.Benjamin published a book „The Transsexual Phenomenon“ in which he described transsexualism on a scale of intensity and used a term of „true transsexuals“ as folowing: „True transsexuals feel that they belong to the other sex, they want to be and function as members of the opposite sex, not only to appear as such. For them, their sex or-gans, the primary (testes) as well as the secondary (penis and others) are disgusting deformities that must be changed by the surgeon’s knife.” The term “transsexualism” developed the modern meaning only in 1940 and was classified in DSM-III in 1980.
A lot of uncertainty remains in the topics of transsexualism epidemiology, etiology, and pathogenesis.
A clinical case of transsexualism: female patient A. K., 17 years old was attended out-patient consultation under her family‘s request. Since childhood her behavior and likings were „boyish“.
The patient claims that at the age of 16 she understood „she is an opposite sex“, started dressing as a man, called herself a man‘s name, met a girlfriend. For about a year she managed to hide it from her family.
The patient was examined in an institution in Vilnius because a schizophrenia spectrum disorder was suspected. In a week she was discharged for her inadequate and agressive behavior. The patient was consulted by psychologist – no thougt disorder confirming schizophrenia spectrum disorder were detected. Gender identity disorder of childhood (F64.2) is presumed refering to anamnesis. At the moment transsexualism (F64.0) is diagnosed. The patient flatly refuses any help of treatment.
doi:10.5200/sm-hs.2012.031
Keyword(s): transsexuality, diagnostics
DOI: 10.5200/272
Full Text: PDF