The missing

Exploring the use of photographs in “working through” the natal body with transgender youth

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8972149
AutoresAklilu Lemma (0000-0002-9465-9054, Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London, London, UK, autor correspondente), Alessandra Lemma
Ano2023
Volume104
Fascículo5
Páginas809-828
Data de publicação2023-09-03
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe International Journal of Psychoanalysis (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0020-7578 • E-ISSN: 1745-8315
EditoraTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00207578.2023.2238040
PMID37902490
OpenAlexW4388024864
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas29

This paper focuses on how for some young people who identify as transgender, the anticipation, and/or the actual process, of transitioning represents a movement away from something in themselves that feels wrong, painful, or traumatic and that has not yet been consciously recognised as such. This becomes a 'missing' part of the self's experience, locked into the body. I suggest that the process of identifying and restitution of 'the missing' part requires working through the natal body in its metaphorical and literal senses, in the service of expanding autonomous choice about how to find a hospitable home in the body. Building on Money-Kyrle's three 'facts of life', I propose a fourth one, namely the inescapable fact of our embodied nature, to underscore that our personal history always includes our embodied history, hence the importance of working through what the natal body unconsciously represents. I describe the use of photographs during psychoanalytic psychotherapy with young people who have commenced social transitioning, to work through visual representations of the natal body in the service of facilitating the working through, in its psychoanalytic sense, of the natal body's unconscious narrative. I suggest that deploying this visual mode may be especially helpful in engaging young people on the autistic spectrum who nowadays comprise a significant minority of transgender young people

Gender dysphoria · Psychoanalysis · Transgender · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research · Psychology