Abstract

This paper addresses the topic of gender identity and the issues arising from it by relating psychoanalytic and anthropological considerations. From a psycho-anthropological perspective, the formation of gender identity and its relation to sexual life and its representations on the psychic level and symbolic formations as pertaining to processes of anthropo-poiesis is considered. From a psychoanalytic perspective, a number of clinical contributions are examined from which emerge the psychic suffering related to the feeling of living and being trapped in a body whose sexual connotation is not perceived as one’s own; and a number of factors are highlighted that converge in determining how what is termed atypical gender identity disorder is declined in different subjective contexts. Gender identity issues arise in adolescent patients at an already very delicate time of transition in terms of maturation and growth in both physiological, sexual and psychological terms