Metamorphosen – (un-)gewisse Gedanken zur Geschlechtsidentität

This work examines the irritating awareness of the culturally conditioned attachment of one’s own perceptions of gender difference and identity. The article addresses the uncertainties both personal and also theoretical, when we consider gender not only as biologically natural as in Freud but also as socially, culturally and historically constructed. These irritations and (un)certainties in gender, which masquerade as certainties, become apparent in a psychoanalytic treatment of a trans man and become active in the analyst’s countertransference. Being able to hold gender irritations and (un)certainties within oneself is seen as an equally important task as avoiding a slide into pathologization and standardization of the gender in the thinking of the treating psychoanalyst and in psychoanalytic discourse.