Harry Benjamin: Creative Maverick

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Ethel Person is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, and Training and Supervising Analyst, Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.

Iwant to thank Charles L. Ihlenfeld, MD, Harry Benjamin's long-time associate (see, Ihlenfeld, 2004), for reading an earlier draft of this chapter. He added some additional information, which I have incorporated in footnotes to the text. I also want to thank Charles for his cooperation and kindnesses during those long-ago years when we were both working in the field of transsexualism.

Notes

¹ The term “transsexualism” was first coined by the sexologist Cauldwell in 1949. He described a case of “psychopathia transsexualism” in which a girl wanted to be a boy, but did not describe transsexualism as it was later elaborated by Harry Benjamin.

² See Denny (2002) for an updated review of the history of transsexual surgeries at academic centers.

³ Steinach stayed at the Vivarium until the Nazis invaded Austria. This was also the same Vivarium that housed Paul Kammerer, the last advocate of Lamarckian inheritance, memorialized by Arthur Koestler in “The Case of the Mid-Wife Toad,” as well as von Frisch, discoverer of the dance language of bees, and Paul Weiss, who did limb transplants on amphibians. In fact, the Vivarium was a center for the newly burgeoning interest in actual animal experimentation and, as such, the center of much publicity, controversy, and singular scientific achievement.

⁴ Dr. Ihlenfeld told me that they were married December 23, 1925, and that Gretchen had revealed to him that about six months after they were married Harry brought his mother from Germany to live with them. She also told Dr. Ihlenfeld that from then on their bedroom door remained open.