Please send your responses to Daniel:
Dear Daniel,
I apologize for responding so late but just noticed your post and thought better late than never. I hope that your journey is safe and things are being clarified as you go along.
I am a post operative MtF transsexual that has recently been diagnosed with DID. The time lapse between surgery and the DID diagnosis has been over 30 years and now am seriously deliberating if I made an error in judgment or "Who really wanted this surgery?" and "Why did I have it?" Many questions unanswered and as I'm approaching senior-hood, they may never be answered.
The best source of information I've found is on Aaron Devor's website. Mr. Devor (formerly Holly) has solid information on the relationship between transsexualism and dissociation, as well as on the psychological steps that we go through to reach this stage of needing "change". My therapist, G-d bless her, has read it as well and learned much from it.
Hopefully these things can be resolved within you before reaching the stage that I am at, when things are irreversable.
Karen (my real name)
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Dear Daniel,
my heart goes to you.
If loving thoughts can help you to feel better, know that I am sending mine.
I have no knowledge of the kind you need. Would it be worthwhile posting a small
message in a newsletter put out by a group who advocates on behalf of transgendered
people to be in touch with others who are familiar with dissociation? If you
could hook into a social group of transgendered people (even online) and ask
there is anyone has had the experience of dissociation, you might find others
who you can relate to.
I entered the words "transgendered" and "dissociation" (not "dissociative" as
Lynn W. had done -- see next message) into the Google search engine and had
"about 551 hits". The first of those is this, with a case study taken from "The
International Journal of Transgenderism" (Volume 2, Number 2, April - June 1998),
titled "Transgenderism and Dissociative Identity Disorder - A Case Study" by
Bonnie R. Saks. The link is: http://www.symposion.com/ijt/ijtc0404.htm
I once found a good article online by a psychologist about a subject that I'd
never heard others speak of. I wrote to the author of article, and he sent me
a list of books and related links to help me. Maybe one of the contacts in some
of these hits in Google will provide the same for you.
To reach Google, just enter into your address field of your Internet Explorer
this: www.google.com (or www.google.com.au if you're in Australia, for example.)
Then you can type any word into Google's search field to see what information there is about that subject. But type in more than one word to keep your hits as appropriate as possible Out of my Google search also came this link: http://www.humboldt.edu/~mpw1/personal_issues/
There, I clicked on the "Main" page link to find these words: "Welcome to
Anne Serene's Trans Reference Site This site is not a typical transgender web
site. Most "transgender" sites are introductions on transgenderism, pornography,
pictures, or support resources. While introduvtions and support resources are
an important thing, this site is a reference to transgender information that
is mostly of a more academic nature. This the information on this site is from
a transgender perspective. We hope, in the end, non trans people will learn
more about who they are by looking at their gender in the ways that trans people
do" ******************************
There are other links from this Google search that you might like to look at,
including one that details a study of the incidence of dissociation in a group
of transexuals, which concludes "Further research is suggested to evaluate the
occurrence of dissociation in transsexualism and, in general, in the etiology
of gender disorders".
Keep up the faith, Daniel. Thinking of you!
Epifani
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Dear Daniel,
I do not have personal experience with the transgendered issue, but I checked out the Internet via Google, typing in "transgendered" and "dissociative". I got 517 hits, & a few of these seem useful. Apparently there are news groups on Yahoo and other sites (the alt. groups, for example) that bring together people with transgendered issues, as well as those who are dissociative. I haven't checked these out, but it's worth a look. Also here are two links that might be helpful. The second one looked especially interesting to me.
http://www.humboldt.edu/~mpw1/psychology/
and http://webdb.nyu.edu/sociallinks/menu.cgi?cid=3603
This one highlights the :International Journal of Transgenderism:Volume 4:Number 1, January - March 2000 [Special: Abstracts of the XVI Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association Symposium]. & there seem to be several useful references. Good luck! -
Lynn W.