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Mental health professionals’ understanding of comorbidity in transvestism is rudimentary, largely because it has not been systematically studied. Such work would require reliable diagnostic assessments in a large group of transvestites derived from…

A consideration of treatment issues in men with transvestic fetishism requires, first, an appreciation of the multiple motivations for cross-dressing. Cross-dressing is a complex social and psychological phenomenon involving sexual, affective, and identity components.…

Transvestites who present for treatment are likely to be a minority of heterosexual cross-dressers (Docter 1988; Prince and Bentler 1972; Wise 1990). For example, a range of 17%-49% of members of transvestite social…

Knowledge of transvestism is derived from four sources:

1. Psychoanalytic case studies of small numbers of patients treated over long periods of time (e.g., see Stoller 1966, 1971, 1985)
2. Patients…

Definition

Clothing is the unconscious language of the spirit.

Emanuel Hermann (1878)
Magnus Hirschfeld, a progressive German sexologist and contemporary of Freud, originally described a group of 17 cross-dressers he termed die transvestiten (the transvestites),…

Transvestism and Gender Identity Disorder in Adults

Treating pedophiliac individuals requires coordinating the efforts of a variety of professionals so that services will not be duplicated, and focusing on the already-existent skills of various professionals so that the final…

A number of other forms of therapy are available that focus primarily on the intrapsychic conflicts that have led the pedophiliac individual to commit sexually offensive acts. The goals of such therapies…

Treatment programs for pedophiles do not assume that treatment is something to be delivered only in the therapist’s office and that once it is delivered, the pedophile is cured. Instead, treatment…

Pedophiliac persons may receive treatment to decrease pedophiliac arousal or enhance arousal to adults but still be unable to interact with adults because of deficits in the skills necessary for such interaction…

The majority of pedophiliac individuals are sexually attracted to and involved with adult sexual partners. Only 6.6% of these persons report no adult sexual attraction or interest (Abel and Osborn, in…

When individuals behave in a manner that is counter to societal norms, they frequently lose self-esteem and become anxious or depressed about what they have done. The…

McConaghy and co-workers (McConaghy 1990; McConaghy et al. 1985) described a treatment component for decreasing pedophiliac arousal without aversion therapy. Pedophiliac individuals frequently report having irresistible urges to become sexually involved with children.…

Paraphilias and Paraphilia-Related Disorders