Cover

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Deconstructing the psychiatric body: politics of recognition

Section 1. Unrecognisable bodies, impossible sexualities

Sorry, but you (don't) have it

Gender is straight

To have it is not enough: it must work (but not anywhere)

Impossible sexual practices?

Section 2. Clinical violence and juridical lack of recognition: the production of no-bodies

The diagnostic requirement of submission

Juridico-clinical regulations: the double violence of gender

What is this no-body?

2 The biologisation of gender: somatic fictions of identity

The sexed brain

Where is the psycho-social? Rhetorics of colonisation

Gender as hormonal production

(Ir)reversible bodies

The double biologisation of gender: biologising the performance

Does biologisation psychopathologise?

3 The confessed story of unlivable lives: psychopathologising oppression

The prescription of distress

I confess, therefore I exist

Mental health under suspicion

Other psychologisations: social phobia

The discursive bond between diagnosis and treatment

Speaking of treatments, what is being treated?

The (un)finished bodies of psychiatry

Between creation and negation: the unlivable identity of transsexuality

Conclusion

Monstrogenesis and monstrolysis: the regulative production of death (epilogue)

Homo/transphobia: an architecture of collapse

Death as an operation, life as an objective

The psychopathologisation of transsexuality as a border operation between death and life

Bibliography

Index

What articulations between bodies, genders and desires are required socio-culturally for recognition of what is human? What happens with those people who do not meet the heteronormative criteria of intelligible life? Are psychology and medicine part of the solution, or part of the problem? This pioneering book presents a novel analysis of transgender constructions within a clinical setting, examining the experiences of 'transsexuality in treatment' interpreted through psychological, feminist, post-structuralist and queer theories. Based on research that includes interviews with the clinic's professionals and users, notes from its group therapy sessions, and analysis of its manuals and scientific productions, the author shows how the psychological sciences not only 'treat' transsexuality, but construct it in each of its elements: corporality, sexuality, identity, performances and vulnerability. Looking at the work of philosophers such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Paul B. Preciado, this book also highlights how the productive character of language and other subjectifying technologies are linked to the symbolic and material violence that falls on these bodies, deconstructing the bio-scientific and sociocultural conceptions that nourish the understanding of trans life experiences that are medicalised and psychopathologised. No Body is a valuable book for students, researchers and professionals in critical psychology, psychiatry and social sciences, and anyone interested in the fields of transsexuality and homo/transphobia, feminism and queer theory, discourse analysis and the construction and signification of the body, gender and sexualities.