ABSTRACT

As much as one may attempt to determine the gender of one's psyche, something will always be lacking, something will be left to reckon with, specifically, the body's deception of the psychic body image. The mourning of one's body for a trans^* person may follow a unique path but it shares the universal human experience of self-acceptance. A person must come to feel the body in order to accept that aspects of the physical body do not match the person's gender; there is a loss for what was never present and what will never be of the person's body. The phenomena of phantom limb experience will be explored as a means for understanding trans^* embodiment and how the bodily phantom must be mourned to be reclaimed. In addition, this paper will explore the concept and relationship of phantom sensations and prosthetics in transgender individuals and how to make clinical use of them. The process of selecting physical interventions to reconstruct oneself will be explored through a schema illustrating the public and private aspects of each bodily intervention available for medical transition. This schema can be used in clinical settings and the public/private realms of the body will be discussed using psychotherapy case material.