This study is based on personal experience, clinical work, supervision sessions and theoretical studies. It presents the experience I lived as an analyst during my gender transition, focusing on the symbols and psychodynamic patterns this event activated within the analytical setting; the challenging defenses and projections; the new forms of interactions between patient and analyst; the unexpected directions constellated during the course of the individuation process; the development of the therapeutic relationship and finally the understanding of the existence of parallels with other important social movements happening in this historical time. Excerpts of clinical material will be used to illustrate this discussion, respecting confidentiality accordingly.
The main motivation that guided these reflections can be synthesized by Jung’s (1) following words, when referring to the vital impulse connected to the child archetype “[…] it represents the strongest, the most ineluctable urge in every being, namely the urge to realize itself. It is, as it were, an incarnation of the inability to do otherwise, equipped with all the powers of nature and instinct, whereas the conscious mind is always getting caught up in its supposed ability to do otherwise [...]’. Based on this impulse I was able to gather energy and strength to make my transition possible, achieving more integrity, fulfillment and a greater sense of unity with my inner world and outer interactions. This process included years of personal therapy, cross hormone therapy and surgical interventions (facial feminization, breast implant and affirming surgery), through an unknown path, whilst holding onto a known inner sense of myself based on deep feelings, trust and self-knowledge. Along with an intense personal process, energy was also required to sustain the therapeutic boundaries and patients’ processes, allowing emotions and feeling to come out and to be worked through in the therapeutic field at various levels.
The experience of my gender transition offered opportunities for reflections and the possibility to contact new energies (archetypal forces), for both patient and analyst, thus broadening and complexifying the understanding of gender and sexuality. The transgender movement is a phenomenon that has been gaining prominence and space, provoking dialogues through theoretical discussions, expanding clinical practices and political action and finally helping transcend the linear notion of opposites towards a sense of multiplicity, fluidity and simultaneity both in the personal and collective perspective. As Preciado (2)points out, “the ancient regime (political, sexual, racial) criminalizes all practices of crossing. But whenever the passage is possible, themap of a new society begins to be outlined, with new forms of production and reproduction of life”.
(1) JUNG, C.G. The Invincibility Child (1959/2002, Vol. IX §289)
(2) PRECIADO, B. P. An apartment on Uranus, 2020 (p. 32/33)