Desire for amputation of a healthy limb has usually been regarded as a paraphilia (apotemnophilia), but some researchers propose that it may be a disorder of identity, similar to Gender Identity Disorder (GID) or transsexualism. Similarities between the desire for limb amputation and nonhomosexual male-to-female (MtF) transsexualism include profound dissatisfaction with embodiment, related para...

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is in the process of revising its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), with the DSM-V having an anticipated publication date of 2012. As part of that ongoing process, in May 2008, APA announced its appointment of the Work Group on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders (WGSGID). The announcement generated a flurry of concerned and anxious responses i...

Society prescribes a set model of heterosexual development toward a gender and sexual identity. Individuals with gender and sexual identities that do not conform to the prescribed heterosexual identities must essentially develop their own way, that is, they must privately negotiate their path through identity development and identity adoption. However, while negotiating their private reality, t...

marriage and having a family is along with consequences for each person and it provides the ground for developing identity and stability in his life. however, the separation of couples leads to various problems. this issue is along with far more complicated problems for women. the objective of this study is the better understanding of motherhood experiences of divorced women on the custody of t...

Previous research suggests that prenatal testosterone affects the 2D:4D finger ratio in humans, and it has been speculated that prenatal testosterone also affects gender identity differentiation. If both things are true, then one would expect to find an association between the 2D:4D ratio and gender identity. We measured 2D:4D in two samples of patients with gender identity disorder (GID). In S...

Identity-based conceptualizations of sexual orientation may not account adequately for variation in young women's sexuality. Sexual minorities fare worse in psychosocial markers of wellbeing (i.e., depressive symptoms, anxiety, self esteem, social support) than heterosexual youth; however, it remains unclear whether these health disparities exclusively affect individuals who adopt a sexual mino...

Gonadal steroids have remarkable developmental effects on sex-dependent brain organization and behavior in animals. Presumably, fetal or neonatal gonadal steroids are also responsible for sexual differentiation of the human brain. A limbic structure of special interest in this regard is the sexually dimorphic central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc), because its siz...

Narratives about sexuality, including those which involve sexual identity labels, are always historically, socially, politically and culturally located (Foucault, 1976; Giddens, 1992; Plummer, 1995; Weeks, 2007). In later life, any older person is likely to have lived through several changes in which sexual identity labels are widely known, which are favoured and which considered insulting. Sex...

Preamble In December of 1998, the Board of Trustees issued a position statement (see attached) that the American Psychiatric Association opposes any psychiatric treatment, such as "reparative" or conversion therapy, which is based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that a patient should change his/her sexual homosexual orient...