1st Edition

NO BODY Clinical Constructions of Gender and Transsexuality - Pathologisation, Violence and Deconstruction

By Miguel Roselló-Peñaloza Copyright 2018
    126 Pages
    by Routledge

    126 Pages
    by Routledge

    What articulations between bodies, genders and desires are required socio-culturally for recognition of what is human? What happens with those people who do not meet the heteronormative criteria of intelligible life? Are psychology and medicine part of the solution, or part of the problem?

    This pioneering book presents a novel analysis of transgender constructions within a clinical setting, examining the experiences of "transsexuality in treatment" interpreted through psychological, feminist, post-structuralist and queer theories. Based on research that includes interviews with the clinic’s professionals and users, notes from its group therapy sessions, and analysis of its manuals and scientific productions, the author shows how the psychological sciences not only "treat" transsexuality, but construct it in each of its elements: corporality, sexuality, identity, performances and vulnerability. Looking at the work of philosophers such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Paul B. Preciado, this book also highlights how the productive character of language and other subjectifying technologies are linked to the symbolic and material violence that falls on these bodies, deconstructing the bio-scientific and sociocultural conceptions that nourish the understanding of trans life experiences that are medicalised and psychopathologised.

    No Body is a valuable book for students, researchers and professionals in critical psychology, psychiatry and social sciences, and anyone interested in the fields of transsexuality and homo/transphobia, feminism and queer theory, discourse analysis and the construction and signification of the body, gender and sexualities.

    Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. The (un)finished bodies and the (im)possible sexualities of Psychiatry Chapter 3. Clinical violence and juridical lack of recognition: the production of monsters Chapter 4. The biologization of the abnormal: somatic fictions of identity Chapter 5. The confessed story of unlivable lives: psychopathologization of oppressions Chapter 6. Monstrogenesis and monstrolysis: the regulative production of death. Conclusion

    Biography

    Miguel Roselló-Peñaloza is Professor in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences at the Universidad de Las Américas, Chile. His research interests include feminisms and queer theory; the construction of difference and stigmatisation based on sex, gender and sexual practices; and deconstruction of psychopathology and power relations in science, clinical practices and public politics.

    "An important contribution to the process of de-pathologization of gender queer identities and sexualities. Miguel Roselló's work interrogates the responsibility of psychiatric sciences within the perpetuation of gender and sexual violence and claims for a queer and transfeminist transformation of the clinical field. Anyone interested in clinical psychology and transgender politics should read this book. "

    – Paul B. Preciado, Philosopher and transgender activist

    "This book is a very well documented and persuasive challenge of the way socio-political classification and discrimination has occurred in the pathologization of transsexuality in the psychiatric sciences. Classification is, in effect, the way we have to order the worlds in which we live. Still, contrary to common sense, we do not classify because there are real things to classify. When we classify we choose or invent reasons to do so. By identifying the successively changing forms of cataloguing transsexuality since the 1950th in psychiatry and their clinical reasons, the author illustrates in a dramatic fashion the dynamic power of prevailing socio-political norms on sex, sexual practices, bodily presentation and words at times with very brutal effects. But beyond arguing for the dignity of multiple sexualities and bodies, this book also argues for the more fundamental conclusion that we are all human beings who come with very diverse bodies and desires, as its title, No Body, in effect, suggests."

    – Verena Stolcke, Emeritus Professor, Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona

    "An extremely interesting book for understanding how, despite social activism's proposals for the deconstruction of identity and sexuality, both biological determinism and binary essentialism for sex-gender identities continue to be reproduced in the mental health field. To achieve real advances towards de-psychopathologisation, the author shows agilely and convincingly how pressing the need is for a transformation of the socio-sexual and heteronormative foundations of the "psy" sciences. Highly recommended reading for anyone interested in cross-disciplinary thinking and its transformation from the perspective of queer theory."

    – Teresa Cabruja Ubach, Universitat de Girona

    "Miguel Roselló-Peñaloza not only offers empirical examples of literal and symbolic violence in the construction of transgender alongside and, through that, attending the production and regulation of (homo)sexuality and gender. By his clear and elegant combination of theoretical account and analysis of policy and practice contexts, he offers both challenges and also new possibilities. This book should be read by psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists and anyone who works with or is engaged in thinking about trans and gender issues.”
    – Erica Burman, University of Manchester