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The Sexual Drive in Transvestism:

Sexual drive is usually weak. According to Gutheil, most transvestites "have little interest in sex. They start late with their sexual contacts and engage in tl.em using paraphilic (transvestite) fantasies."

(((ED NOTE: This may be true of the type of person who finds his way to the psychoanalysts couch, but what of the rest of us. I certainly know a number of TVs who are: (a) heterosexual, (b) sexually interested and active, and (c) well enough adjusted and oriented that they have no need for psychiatric help. This type of person proves once again that the medical profession bases its comments about TVism on an incom- plete and misleading sample of the TV population.)))

With regard to the sexual aim, transvestites may be divided into the following types:

The a-sexual type. Here the mere cross-dressing seems to be an end in itself. It completely replaces al other forms of sexual activity and of sexual desires. The dress of the opposite sex provides these individuals with an asexual general feeling of well-being, of relaxation and satisfaction. Benjamin regards their libido as "cerebral" and says that "it can be aroused and gratified by the fact of "being a woman." Hirschfeld calls them "a-sexual or sexless transvestites.

A classical example of this type of transvestism is the case reported by Flint (quoted after Ellis). This patient, a 21 year old white male, dressed as a maid-servant was employed by a Boston family. He slept with the servant girls and attended his mistress in her bath. He never ex- perienced any sexual feelings for either sex, and never had erotic dreams, emissions or erections, although his genital organs were "generously developed".

The auto-mono-sexua type. In this group the cross-dressing with or without self-admiration in a mirror, seems always to lead to, and to culminate in, masturbation. Occasionally