[The transsexual patient: a challenge for cooperation between psychological and surgical medicine].

Transsexuality is not seen as a disorder by itself but rather as a common final stage of different dispositions and developments, with the common core of disordered, conflicting gender identity, and the common transsexual desire for "gender reassignment". Proceeding on the ascertainable increase in frequency in the past 15 years we wonder whether some sort of collaboration between psychological and surgical medicine and persons with identity disorders may not have been conducive to the transsexual desire at the expense of a thorough study of the phenomenon as well as psychotherapeutic possibilities. Under this aspect it is analyzed and depicted which the dimensions of transsexual experience are, what constitutes the personality of transsexuals, and how the development toward transsexuality takes its course. Subsequently there is a critical analysis of the "fulfillment" of the transsexual desire under the transsexuality-law and by means of physical-medical measures. A study of case histories and follow-ups at hand reveals whether the desire for gender reassignment has indeed been fulfilled. In conclusion the recent critical re-orientation toward psychotherapy for transsexuals as a method to control psychic disorders by psychic means is corroborated, albeit its chances may be viewed rather skeptically in the light of the present boom of gender reassignment operations.