Colette Chiland

The word 'transsexualism' was coined in 1953 and although transsexuals and intersexed people had existed for much longer, surgery to reassign one's sex is a relatively recent phenomenon. Transsexuals feel that the opposite sex to their biological one is their true identity - their true body and self. The idea of 'hormonal and surgical sex reassi

It is well known that Freud laid great emphasis on sexual matters. In the years that followed, a distinction was drawn between sex and gender, and the idea of gender identity was introduced. Human beings do not spend every minute of their lives copulating, but at every minute of their lives their gender identity is present. Sex Makes the World

""There have always been men and women who refused to live in the body in which they were born. We entered a new era when advances in surgery and hormonology made possible a certain transformation of the body. However, we do not change a biological man into a biological woman or a biological woman into a biological man: we change the appearance and the marital status. A biological man can build himself as a social woman and a biological woman can build herself as a social man, and then live happily. To help them in this long and painful path, we advocate for the improvement of care by an increase in the resources allocated to the multidisciplinary teams that ensure this transition."" C. C. A university professor, Colette Chiland taught child and adolescent psychology and psychopathology, then clinical psychology at the University of Paris-Descartes. A psychiatrist, she worked at the Alfred-Binet Center (Paris) and is honorary president of the International Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Associated Professions. A psychoanalyst, she was a training member of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society. She has published, among others, Sois sage, ma douleur.

Transsexualism is a stimulating, proactive and important book. Colette Chiland does not back away from difficult issues. She forces all of us to look at our assumptions about t5ranssexualism and to re-examine what gender and sex really mean' - Christine Ware, author of Where Id Was: Challenging Normalization in Psychoanalysis 'In a nutshell, the book offers a much-needed alternative view of transsexuality from a psychiatric and European point of view… Chiland's interesting and well presented book is a valued reminder of how different the same topic can appear in an alternative perspective' - Transgender Tapestry Colette Chiland exhibits a masterful and encyclopedic knowledge of transsexualism, drawing together the insights of depth psychology, psychoanalysis, history, anthropology and sociology for rethinking transsexualism in terms of identity, subjectivity and the wider socio-historical world. This book is written with considerable precision on complex, technical issues, whilst at the same time keeping the broader question of the relationship between transsexualism and society firmly in mind.

This text examines the role of violence in the world of the child. Consistent efforts by parents, it claims, are overwhelmed by the poisonous atmosphere of the neighbourhood in which a child lives. And what is violence from a child's point of view?