Transgender Children: The Making of a Modern Hysteria

Abstract

Jung made frequent reference to the fact that unconscious forces find myriad ways to express themselves. Historians of psychiatry and others have explored the role of culture in shaping and spreading psychological symptoms. In this context is the recent phenomenon of the transgender child. The rise in the number of children and teens self-diagnosing as transgender can be compared with the explosion in the numbers of young women exhibiting symptoms of hysteria at the end of the 19th century. Both diagnoses are characterized by subjective symptoms that cannot be objectively verified; both have been propagated by high profile physicians; both affect vulnerable patients, particularly adolescent females; and both have taken root in supportive cultural environments. Hysterical symptoms ought to be explored as expressions of the unconscious; that is, they ought to be taken seriously but explored for their symbolic meaning rather than taken at face value.

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this article appeared in Inventing Transgender Children and Young People, published by Cambridge Scholars in 2019 and edited by Michele Moore and Heather Brunskell-Evans. Published with the permission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

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Notes on contributors

Lisa Marchiano

Lisa Marchiano is a writer and a Jungian analyst in private practice in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She received her MSW from New York University and completed analytic training at the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. Lisa is on the faculty of the Philadelphia Jung Institute, where she teaches regularly. Her writings have appeared in Quillette, the journal Psychological Perspectives, and Areo Magazine. Since 2018, Lisa has been cohosting the popular podcast This Jungian Life. Lisa’s book, Motherhood: Facing and Finding Yourself, uses myths and fairy tales to explore motherhood as a catalyst for personal growth.