1980: Transgender Orientation

The young adult: development after adolescence, 1980, page 73

…Throughout the adolescent period there is progressive experimentation and initiation into direct sexual contact. Cross-cultural data (Money & Ehrhardt, 1972) indicate that for the great majority of people  sexual intercourse first occurs during this period. In addition, a vast array of incidental skills arc being tried out and developed. These range from the simple ability to conduct everyday conversation with the opposite sex to being able to develop relationships on a social and personal level. For people of homosexual or transgender orientation, adolescence often brings their dawning awareness of self into poignantly sharp focus. Even where sexually oriented behavior is minimal or nonexistent, it can be safely asserted that considerable amounts of effort and energy are being expended by the individual in containing, blocking, inhibiting, or channeling sexual expression. In the case of the male, the most celibate inevitably have sexual dreams including nocturnal emissions – even where such ordinary forms of sexual discharge as masturbation are proscribed. From a psychological viewpoint the primary issue here is not what the person does in overt behavior. Rather, it is the fact that so much of mental life and feelings is taken up with sexual matters. And, irrespective of what the person is actually doing, he or she is, to a very considerable degree, involved with developing or preventing from emergence this consistent preoccupation with sexuality. Narcissistic Orientation A closely related   …