Book Review

TRANSACTIONS OF THE N.Y. ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, Ser. II, Vol. 29, No. 4, pp 428-467.

No really a book, and you may have a bit of trouble buying it, but you can write the Academy at 2 East 63rd St., New York 10021 and try. Beg a little; it is worth it, being the full report on the meeting there on Transsexualism of January 16, 1967 and not released until last Winter. The following summaries attempt to put the gist of each speaker's message in a few words:

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H. BENJAMIN, "The Transsexual Phenomenon," p 428, is an introductory statement which opened the meeting. It is essentially a summary of his book, but quotes the latest work on the prenatal hormone influences as a likely cause for genderal disorientation.

R. J. STOLLER, "Etiological Factors in Male Transsexualism," p 431, is largely devoted to a few cases which he considers hardly typical, but indicative of the way in which over-mothering can lead to the boy becoming transsexual through identification with his mother. Oddly, each mother was a masculine type and each father tended to absent himself from the home. He expresses the hope that "early diagnosis and treatment" can perhaps be used to save such cases from the necessity of a conversion operation later on. In a footnote apparently added after the meeting he says that he cannot "exclude the possibility that some biological force plays a role." (Watch for his book to be reviewed in TVia #52!)

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