Postoperative psychological functioning of adolescent transsexuals: A Rorschach study. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 31, 255-261. for Transgender Adolescents Page C-13

Adolescent transsexuals were compared with adolescent psychiatric out-patients and first-year university students to determine the extent to which other psychopathology is a necessary condition for the development of transsexualism. Three areas of psychological functioning associated with fundamental psychological disturbances—perceptual inaccuracy, disor-ders of thought and negative self-image—were assessed by means of the Rorschach Comprehensive System. The group of adolescent transsexuals was found to be intermediate between adolescent psychiatric patients and nonpatients for extent of perceptual inaccuracy. They did not differ significantly from nonpatients with regard to thinking disturbances and negative self-image. The psychiatric patients included significantly more individuals characterized by negative self image than the other groups. The results support the idea that major psychopathology is not required for the development of transsexualism. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. The persistent sense of discomfort and inappropriateness about one’s anatomic sex and the persistent wish to be rid of one’s genitals and live as a member of the other sex are considered to be the two essential features of transsexualism (American Psychiatric Association, 1980, The authors thank Annelies Bovenhoff, Judith Niessen, and Jeannette Veenhuizen for testing many of the subjects seen in this study