Gender Dysphoria

Susan Evans is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist trained at the former Lincoln Centre for Psychotherapy. Retired after nearly 40 years in the NHS, she now has a private practice in South East London. She is a member of the British Psychotherapy Foundation, the London Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Service, and is registered with the British Psychoanalytic Council (BCP). She trained as a State Registered Nurse in 1977, then trained as an RMN and worked within many mental health specialist services including addictions, eating disorders, and in a specialist mother and baby service, which won the Sir Graham Day Award for NHS service development (1999).As a psychotherapist she worked for 12 years at the Tavistock and Portman NHSFT in the Adult Department and also in the Gender Identity Development Service for Children. She was responsible as Course Organiser for the development and delivery as senior clinical lecturer of several training programmes at the Tavistock and a Senior Fellow at University of East London.Marcus Evans is a psychoanalyst and was an adult psychotherapist at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust with 40 years’ experience in mental health, originally training as a psychiatric nurse. After qualifying as a psychotherapist at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust, he took up a post as head of the nursing discipline. Marcus was Associate Clinical Director of the Adult & Adolescent departments between 2011 and 2015. Marcus has designed, developed, and taught outreach courses for front line staff in various settings for the last 25 years. He was also one of the founding members of the Fitzjohn’s Service for the treatment of patients with severe and enduring mental health conditions and/or personality disorder in the adult department. He has written and taught extensively and is author of Making Room for Madness in Mental Health: The Psychoanalytic Understanding of Psychotic Communications, published by Karnac in the Tavistock Clinic series.

• AcknowledgementsPreface by David BellForeword by Stephen B. LevineCHAPTER ONEWhy have we written this book?CHAPTER TWODevelopmental theoryCHAPTER THREEPsychoanalytic ideas regarding gender dysphoriaCHAPTER FOURWorking with fixed states of mindCHAPTER FIVEThe familyCHAPTER SIXAdolescenceCHAPTER SEVENComplexities of delivering therapyCHAPTER EIGHTDetransitionersCHAPTER NINEThe link between suicidal ideation and genderdysphoriaCHAPTER TENThe link between emotionally unstable personality disorder and gender dysphoria in mental health settingsCHAPTER ELEVENCo-morbid mental health issues and gender dysphoriaCHAPTER TWELVEThe societal, cultural and political environmentReferencesIndex

In this timely, necessary book, Susan and Marcus Evans provide key insights into what adequate psychotherapeutic explorations of gender dysphoria should look like […] This book is a must-read not only for those working with gender dysphoria but also those who wish to expand their thinking on this cutting-edge work when dealing with the unbearableness of catastrophic anxiety.