37.

acceptance and love by pretending to be "a little girl," i,e. cross-dressing.

Further. being rejected by their parents for their sex (i.e. their "unwanted" genitals), some patients de- velop a hostile, sadomas cochistic attitude towards their own genitalia. They direct their resentment and their hatred to this visible "cause" of their rejection and unhappiness, and want to have them; 1, either hidden under the dress of the sex to which their parents wanted them to belong, and which they try by their cross-dress- ing to represent (transvestites); or 2, completely re- moved and possibly supplanted by means of a "conversion- operation" (transsexualists). In this way both types endeavor to acquire the acceptance and love of their parent Dressing of children in the garb of the opposite sex is the next frequent etiological factor. Almost every transvestite alleges that he was dressed in Girl's Dresses till he was 3 or 4, or more years old. This may perplex him and prevent his identification with members of his inborn sex.

Cross-dressing for punishment is another possible precipitator of transvestite tendencies by way of traum- atic fixation. This only applies to male subjects, AS only the female dress for men has a humiliating connota- tion in our culture. There follow some illustrations: London's (67) patient was punished by his mother by being forced to wear girl's clothes at the age of 6. At first he felt "so shy and humiliated that when visitors came he would hide under the table." However soon he developed an unhealthy interest in the garments of his mother, and would put them on whenever he had the oppor- tunity of doing so. Our patient "B" was punished in ex- actly the same way. Subsequently he developed a desire

to wear girl's clothes permanently.

The favored status of a little girl in the family group played a causative role in many transvestite cases. The symbolism of transvestism here is self-explanatory: through assuming the dress of the preferred sex (and thus pretending to belong to it) the respective children want to participate in the preferential treatment of this sex.