Interesting article by Miranda Yardley from 2018
"The Science of Gender: what influences gender development and gender dysphoria"
Extracts
"With thanks to Bob Withers for the original work dated 23 October 2018. I have taken Bob’s words unabridged and added my comments in italics. This was a write-up of The 2018 European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology (ESPE) Science Symposium on 18-19 October 2018 at The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust entitled ‘The Science of Gender: Evidence for what influences gender development and gender dysphoria and what are the respective influences of nature and nurture’. "
"This conference was funded by Pfizer pharmaceuticals"
"Professor Gary Butler of UCLH and the Tavistock GIDS introduced proceedings. He remarked that no chromosomal, hormonal, or other physical anomalies had been detected in the clinical population using the GIDS, despite initially screening for these.
Dr Polly Carmichael, head of the GIDS and a clinical psychologist, went on to give the first talk. It concerned the differences and similarities between gender dysphoria and sex development disorders. Surprisingly, given her profession and the stated purpose of the conference, Polly did not mention psychological factors influencing gender development. Instead she emphasised genetic, biological and social elements. When questioned about this omission she described it as a ‘Freudian slip’. The omission is surprising given the Tavistock’s position as a leading psychoanalytic clinic and the preoccupation with identity development in psychoanalysis. Freud’s (1917) Mourning and melancholia, Winnicott’s (1967) ‘mirroring’ and the Boston Change Process Study Group’s recent (2010) work on the role of implicit relational knowing in the construction of the inner world are all deeply concerned with the development of identity.
Unfortunately, this reluctance to address psychological factors proved to be a feature of the conference. There was not a single talk on the role of psychological factors in the aetiology of gender dysphoria or gender identity. But Professor Riittakerttu Kaltiala-Heino, an adolescent psychiatrist from Tampere Finland, did acknowledged the importance of a psychodynamic perspective. She spoke about her clinical experiences- including her work with ‘adolescent onset gender dysphoria’, sometimes known as ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD)’. She made several important points, observing for instance that in Finland, as elsewhere, psychological co-morbidities remain largely untreated because psychotherapists wrongly believe that only gender identity specialists should treat GD patients. In her experience, such co-morbidities are likely to persist if they are not addressed psychologically before medical treatment. Interestingly she also mentioned that several of her patients seemed to share an identity. Many of the young FtMs in her care claimed to have spent large parts of their childhood alone in the woods fantasising about being a male wolf for instance. She acknowledged privately that this was probably due to social contagion via the internet as people were encouraged to provide the sort of history that would facilitate their medical transition."
See more at:
mirandayardley.com/en/the-science-of-gender-what-influences-gender-development-and-gender-dysphoria/