Crossing Over

Using fantasies, dreams, and detailed clinical process I take the reader with me through a 10-year analysis in which Rebecca transitions to becoming a transman, Raphael, while I, too, transition in my psychoanalytic understanding of the processes and meanings that inform this journey. I explore the materiality of trans narratives, the centrality of the body, and the acquisition of sexed embodiment, a complex process of gaining a sense of ownership and investment in one's bodily self and genitals. I venture into the role of unconscious phantasies, the body as vessel for that which cannot be spoken, and the role of colonization of the body by the other. In addition, I explore the shifting transference/countertransference dynamics, the changing relational matrix that ensues when transitioning occurs, and interrogate my own sense of gendered embodiment.