Abnormal Psychology Lecture Notes

4/5/99

1. Are you a man or a woman?
2. How do you know?

• layer of science runs very thin over topic of sex; little science to back it up

• Male patient who made physiological changes to a woman; 10 suicide attempts before this change

First Interview: 1 month into treatment, Chris had just started to change

• parental longing
• absent distant father
• early cross dressing as a child
• mother wanted to have another girl – thought Chris was a girl to begin with – had dresses to take him home in
• mother stayed with him all the time – even in the bathroom
• one memory of putting on mother’s lipstick – approval from mother
• wanted to be a hairstylist, but father disapproved
• at age 3, considered himself to be a sister
• 4^th grade, got a girlfriend and noticed the girl was different from him – tried to act "male" but wasn’t excited
• looked at male nude pictures
• felt perverted when a girl kissed him – always felt like a girl
• wore mother’s clothing

Second Interview: After 1 year of therapy and started hormone therapy

• "I’m a girl"
• used to be a miserable person, a "non-person"

Fourth Interview: After Sexual Reassignment Surgery

• 11 ½ hours of surgery, had to have secondary surgery on vagina
• letdown because expectations were too high
• sensed some hostility – people should keep an open mind to all different forms of heterosexuality

Does this person have a disorder?

• Identity disorder – confused, not necessarily sexual
• physical disorder – woman born with a penis
• was the disorder in the beginning (when he tried to commit suicide) – depression?

Person presents with certain symptoms: anatomy of a man but:

• doesn’t accept anatomy and gender assignments – anatomy and concurrent socialization and pressure to accept the assignment
• was able to convince open-minded surgeon to correct his delusions
• What do you call a delusion that someone else is convinced of?
• What’s accomplished by the surgery?
• Effects of estrogen therapy over the long term – vascular problems, breast cancer

All boils down to what’s normal –

bifrication of disorder:

1. presumes that sexuality – people desire sexual activity as a recreational function – highly affluent, non-agricultural societies
2. sex is only for procreation and reproduction – only those functional discrepancies are valid as sexual disorders – hardly mentioned as a criterion for abnormality

Sexual Disorders
1. Dysfunctional

** all are treatable with largely behavioral treatment

• looking into windows – looking for sexual activity or unclothed females
• problems started at 9 years old with fantasizing about girls wearing different clothing – would sit in parking lot and masturbate
• realized it was a problem and the dangers of getting caught
• started peeping when he worked for an apartment complex and went on night patrol
• knows what are safe, potential areas – most are unaware of him watching
• feels guilty about peeping from the beginning
• urge gets so strong sometimes that he has no control over this
• obsessive-compulsive