One case does not prove anything, neither the "reactive" theory, nor the nature of the cause of transvestism. All I have intended is to show how one transvestite might have been made. Eventually an accumulation of such case studies will show what are the common causes of this abnormality of behaviour. My account will have served its purpose if it reminds others that Biochemical, Endocrine, or purely external environmental disturbances are not the only pos- sible causes of transvestism. We must learn to regard the Mind as an entity that in its development reacts actively with its environment and is not merely a passive mould to be shaped by external events. We must equally remember that a person may be quite unconscious of the reactions or constructs that govern his behaviour.
Quite distinct from the matter of the causes of transvestism are the problems of its management and the relationship of this to the needed synthesis of the "masculine" and the "feminine" aspects of the human personality.
C. G. Jung, in the 1930s, first drew our attention to the need for this synthesis. Rather than paraphrase his writings, I would prefer to quote a few lines written by Michael Tippet, a British Composer, in the libretto of his Oratorio, "The Child of our Times" which was published in 1942. In the opening sections come the following words:-
The soul of Man is impassioned like a woman. She is as old as the Earth,
Beyond Good and Evil, in sensual garments. She will at last come into her own.
Then is the time of his deliverance.
A few pages later comes this devastatingly grim warning:-
Man has measured the heavens with a telescope,
And driven the Gods from their thrones,
But the Soul, watching the chaotic mirror,
Knows that the Gods return.
Truly, truly, the living God consumes within,
And turns the flesh to Cancer.
We can all see all round us at all times the cancers we have started growing in our human societies by the uncontrolled exercise of our masculine wills and the equally uncontrolled explosive actions of the feminine principle breaking through. The need is for all men, and women too, to realize, become conscious of, accept, integrate
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