This comprehensive book provides you with a clinical and theoretical overview of the issues facing transgendered/transsexual people and their families. Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and Their Families views assessment and treatment through a nonpathologizing lens that honors human diversity and acknowledges the role of oppression in the developmental process of gender identity formation.

Specific sections of Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and Their Families address the needs of gender-variant people as well as transgendered children and youth. The issues facing gender-variant populations who have not been the focus of clinical care, such as intersexed people, female-to-male transgendered people, and those who identify as bigendered, are also addressed.

The book examines: the six stages of transgender emergence

coming out transgendered as a normative process of gender identity development

thinking "outside the box" in the deconstruction of sex and gender

the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as the convergence, overlap, and integration of these parts of the self

the power of personal narrative in gender identity development

etiology and typographies of transgenderism

treatment models that emerge from various clinical perspectives

alternative treatment modalities based on gender variance as a normative lifecycle developmental process

Complete with fascinating case studies, a critique of diagnostic processes, treatment recommendations, and a helpful glossary of relevant terms, this book is an essential reference for anyone who works with gender-variant people. Handy tables and figures make the information easier to access and understand.