Many thanks OldCrone
From the article by Di Ceglie
(extract)
"I started to read the work of Robert Stoller (1968, 1975) and other literature on transsexualism. These articles concern mainly work with adults. I found, however, that this reading didn’t help as much as I’d hoped in understanding the complexity of the condition. This patient had to move to another town and so her exploratory therapy with
me had to come to an end. In one of her last sessions she said that perhaps this form of help had come too late and that her parents should have been aware of how she was feeling by the way she behaved. She wondered why they had not sought help for her
when she was a child. Her thoughts made me wonder why there was no service for children with these rare and unusual experiences. This planted in me the seed for the creation of such a service.
Soon after the end of this experience I became a consultant in child psychiatry in Croydon and started a workshop there with two or three members of staff who were interested in this area. We tried to see all the cases in the London Borough of Croydon, with a population of about 300,000, who presented with gender identity problems and we ended up with 3 or 4 cases. Some were seen in family therapy and I took one case into individual therapy. This child had some of the features that Stoller had described.
However, in the clinical sessions I could find no evidence of a ‘blissful’ relationship with the mother. Stoller writes: ‘When extremely feminine boys are studied in childhood, I find that their mothers try to maintain indefinitely a blissfully intimate symbiosis with their son . . .’ (Stoller, 1992)." (continues)
Stoller is discussed in these Uncommon Ground articles by Dr Em:
'Sexist History at the Heart of the ‘Science’ on Transsexualism, Part I: Benjamin, Ihlenfeld, Money & Ehrhardt'
May 1, 2020
(extract)
'Dr Em explores how the founding fathers of ‘scientific’ research on transgenderism/transsexualism were motivated by sexist beliefs.
The ‘science’ of the founding fathers of transgenderism/transsexualism – Harry Benjamin, John Money and Robert Stoller – are still cited and relied upon to change law, to put children on a path of sterilisation and surgery, to remove women’s rights and to argue that all women just naturally want to be treated as second class citizens. For example, Betty Steiner, Ray Blanchard and Kenneth Zucker, current leaders in the field, begin their book with an outline of how ‘Harry Benjamin was one of the first physicians to realize the despair that transsexual patients suffer… In 1968 Robert Stoller published his views on transsexualism from a psychoanalytic perspective… and in 1969 Richard Green and John Money published their coedited book… which has become another standard work in the field’. The NHS Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), a specialised clinic for young people presenting with difficulties with their gender identity subscribes to the views of WPATH. Their website references ‘the Standards of Care of the Harry Benjamin Gender Dysphoria association, which is now the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH)’ and they state in other sections that they ‘agree with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) that “knowledge of the factors contributing to gender identity development in adolescence is still evolving and not yet fully understood by scientists, clinicians, community members, and other stakeholders in equal measure’.
I am unconvinced by the ‘science’ which gender dysphoria, and thus transsexualism/transgenderism, is based on. What was it that convinced you? Was it the small study of tomboys whose assertive play then ‘proved’ that there are girl brains and boy brains? Or was it the way some of the offspring of stressed out rats have coitus which ‘proved’ that prenatal hormones affect mating and thus a gender identity exists? Or maybe it was the hypothesis that the mother had been over attentive to a male child which made him either feel like a girl or wish to distance himself from the men his mother allegedly hated? Even one of the founding fathers of the idea of transsexualism/transgenderism admitted that the concept was undermined by reality, Stoller made the striking admission that ‘obviously, not all beliefs that are contradicted by reality are delusions’. What does that mean? Transgenderism/transsexualism is based on the original science, so after being met with repeated defences of ‘true trans’ or genuine trans have a medical diagnosis I did what I believe we should all do when we can’t get our head around inconsistencies – I turned to the sources. This essay will look at the early ideas of human sex change and emerging field of transsexualism before looking in-depth at the work and ideas of Harry Benjamin and Charles Ihlenfeld, John Money and Anke Ehrhardt. The second essay in this series will explore the work of Robert Stoller, the notion that violence against women is a necessary and natural part of a masculine gender identity and should be encouraged in children. Part two will then question the idea of true trans or genuine trans.(continues)
uncommongroundmedia.com/sexist-science-transsexualism-part-i-benjamin-ihlenfeld-money-ehrhardt/
Sexist History at the Heart of the ‘Science’ on Transsexualism, Part II: Robert Stoller, True Trans
May 3, 2020
(extract)
"As well as relying on Benjamin and Money’s work, Robert Stoller applied Lorenz’s concept of imprinting to the postulated idea of gender identity. Originally published in 1968, Stoller’s first volume, Sex and Gender: The Development of Masculinity and Femininity, argued that transsexualism was the result of faulty imprinting of appropriate gender (sex-role stereotypes). To blame? Women, of course! For example, regarding one child Stoller determined that ‘the child’s physical beauty and artistic abilities made his mother’s “task” of creating a transsexual easier’. Stoller analysed the dreams and self-reports of three (yes, three) case studies of children he deemed transsexual boys and their mothers to formulate a deeply sexist theorem of why children do not conform to sex-role stereotypes. Stoller explained his use of such a limited sample because ‘these three were the only cases of childhood transsexualism seen in the first 10 years of this research project… our having seen so few probably indicates that this is a very rare condition’. Stoller assessed how ‘all the mothers comment that at two or three, these little boys were talking with them as equals concerning feminine matters, and were already well on their way to a later-developed impeccable feminine taste’. He observed of the children that ‘all have a remarkable precocity with regard to painting, dancing, costumes, designing of clothing, acting, hair-dressing, story-telling, and love of music’ and concluded that this was a sign of a female gender identity. This is testament to how the idea of gender dysphoria cements rigid sexist designations of appropriate behaviour for the different sexes. A boy has a flare for creative activities – he must be born wrong according to the gender scientists. These abnormalities, according to Stoller, can be detected before the child is one. Stoller reported of the first child how ‘this boy had actually shown manifestations of femininity which his mother recognized were unusual when he was less than a year old; sitting on her lap, he would look at magazines with her and stop her whenever there was a photograph of a beautiful woman, expressing intense pleasure with loud cooing sounds’. According to Stoller this is part of the proof that the child requires medical correction and is truly transsexual. Go figure." (continues)
uncommongroundmedia.com/robert-stoller-true-trans/
threads:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3896788-Important-series-of-articles-by-Dr-Em-Sexist-History-at-the-Heart-of-the-Science-on-Transsexualism-Part-I-Benjamin-Ihlenfeld-Money-Ehrhardt
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3900484-Dr-Em-article-Sexist-History-at-the-Heart-of-the-Science-on-Transsexualism-Part-II-Robert-Stoller-True-Trans-an-ideology-which-is-antithetical-to-feminism