Between Unfinished Bodies and Impossible Identities: The (Psycho)Pathologization of Transsexuality in the Psychiatric Discourse

Abstract

Psychiatric discourse works by redefining behaviors and relational practices in nosological categories with effects of subjectification. Genders and sexualities overflow the field of action and are translated into continuous and unitary identities that signify the person as a whole, and convert the body in an isolable and objectifiable terrain. When the body does not locate the stabilizers coordinates of sex, gender and desires in a coherent way (according to the normative regulations), it is translated into a mismatch in need of intervention, by a chain of enunciations that deform the required confessions of their life experiences. Through discourse analysis of a brief psychiatric narration about transsexuality, this paper reviews the “what” and the “how” of its pathologization, exploring its politics of recognition and dualistic fictions.