Benjamin, Harry (1885-1986)

The Transsexual Phenomenon

In 1949, Alfred Kinsey recommended a patient to Benjamin. Born male, the patient expressed an acute desire to become a woman. At the time, the recommended treatment for individuals like Benjamin's patient was psychoanalytic therapy aimed at making the mind fit the body. Benjamin, however, was unconvinced of the effectiveness of this approach. Like Hirschfeld, he ascribed to a theory of human bisexu-ality, which at the time meant that all individuals contain a blend of male and female. Seeing gender identity on a continuum, he believed that some people could be born male but feel female. He ultimately gained a reputation among people seeking to change their sex as a medical expert sympathetic to their plight.

Drawing on his work with clients with a variety of “sexual disorders,” Benjamin published his book The Transsexual Phenomenon in 1966. He argued that transsexuals were a group distinct from transvestites (heterosexual men who derived sexual pleasure from dressing in women's clothing but who did not wish to become women) and homosexuals. While overlap between groups was certainly possible, he argued against collapsing them into one category of “sexual pathology,” as each condition required a different treatment approach.

Benjamin and Psychoanalysis

In The Transsexual Phenomenon, Benjamin challenged the dominant psychological treatment of trans-sexuality. He argued that psychoanalysis did not lessen the desire to change sex; it simply forced patients to go underground with their desires and lead miserable lives. Benjamin instead advocated that transsexuals should be given hormones for the sex they wished to become in an attempt to fit the body with the mind. Benjamin also advocated surgery for patients deemed by medical experts to fit the diagnostic criteria for transsexuals. Benjamin's views positioned him as a maverick in the medical community. However, his treatment approach to transsexuahty eventually gained precedence over psychoanalysis.

HBIGDA Lives on

In the 1970s, Benjamin formed what later became the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA). An association of therapists and psychologists, HBIGDA devised a set of “standards of care,” largely derived from Benjamin's case studies, that sanctioned the criteria and diagnostic procedure for transsexuahty. Though Harry Benjamin died in 1986 at the age of 101, HBIGDA still exists. While HBIGDA's care standards have come under fire in recent years by transgender activists who see them as creating regulatory systems of gender, they continue to be considered the legitimate guidelines for the treatment of gender identity disorder, the current psychological diagnosis for transsexuals.