Scholarly record

BODY AND IDENTITY IN CHANGE: THE REPRESENTATIONS OF BODY IN GENDER TRANSITION

Jessica Neri, Prof. E. Faccio, A. Iudici

Abstract

In the path of gender transition, the body may assume a very important role. Through gender transition it is possible to undertake hormonal treatments, surgical operations in order to modify the primary or secondary sexual characteristics, but also other practices of body change and care not bounded to the medical context. These possible interventions or actions may imply different processes of change, meanings and needs, sometimes with doubts and difficulties, for the person in transition who is engaged in giving them directions and sense and in the construction of the own identity. In this paper we describe some of the major representations of body emerging in gender transition paths, starting from narrative interviews with 25 people in transition (between 18 and 60 years old) in the city of Milan in Italy. The interviews have been analyzed through the method of discourse analysis, through which we have highlighted the ways of interpreting the body and changes during the different phases of gender transition. The results and the reflections developed in this work can be useful also in the clinical psychology field, because they allow contribute to the comprehension of experiences of gender variance and create operative models and tools in order to understand and help people to integrate the representations, needs and resources and to follow the person during the whole path.

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