Who’s Transitioning? A cisgender analyst working with gender expansive patients

Abstract

This paper describes the author’s work with three transgender and/or gender expansive patients. The treatments took place at various times over the past twenty years and are presented chronologically. The author, a cisgender analyst, shows how her thinking and her interactions with her patients have changed. In a sense, the analyst is also transitioning as her thoughts and feelings about her gender expansive patients shift. The importance of moving outside of traditional ways of thinking about gender is emphasized, as is the danger of seeking linear, formulaic answers to why a gender-variant patient does not feel at home in their body.

Keywords:

• Anxiety
• body
• cisgender
• gender expansive
• gender-variant
• psychoanalytic transgender

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sandra Silverman

Sandra Silverman, LCSW is faculty and supervisor at The Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy and at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, both in New York City. She is faculty, supervisor, and former member of the executive committee at The Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies, where she is also co-chair of the committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. She has written and presented on topics including analytic vulnerability, gender, and trauma. Her papers have been published in Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Studies in Gender and Sexuality, and she has written chapters for various edited psychoanalytic books. She is in private practice in New York City and in the Hudson Valley.