2021/01/01 by Marc‐Antoine Crocq · 1 citation
Psychology · Arts and Humanities · #LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy #Mental Health and Psychiatry #Medical History and Research #Transgender #Gender dysphoria #Paranoia #Transsexual #Sexology #Psychology #Sexual orientation #Psychiatry #Transvestism #Sex reassignment surgery (male-to-female) #Psychoanalysis #Gender studies #Sociology #Human sexuality
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/19585969.2022.2042166
openalex publication_date 2021/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
This article is a historical review of the medical and psychiatric diagnoses associated with transgender people across epochs. Ancient Greek and Roman writings already mention gender change. Before a diagnosis even existed, historical documents described the lives of numerous people whom we would consider transgender today. The development of medical classifications took off in the nineteenth century, driven by the blooming of natural sciences. In the nineteenth century, most authors conflated questions of sexual orientation and gender. For example, the psychiatrist Krafft-Ebing reported cases of transgender people but understood them as paranoia, or as the extreme degree of severity in a dimension of sexual inversion. In the early 1900s, doctors such as Magnus Hirschfeld first distinguished homosexual and transgender behaviour. The usual term for transgender people was transvestite, before Harry Benjamin generalised the term transsexual in the mid-20th century. The term transgender became common in the 1970s. This article details the evolution of diagnoses for transgender people from DSM-III and ICD-10 to DSM-5 and ICD-11.