Griffin Hansbury, MA, LCSW, is an analytic candidate and a psychotherapist in private practice and at the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in New York City. A specialist and clinical supervisor in working with trans patients, his writing on the topic has appeared in journals such as Studies in Gender and Sexuality and Psychoanalytic Social Work.

Elijah C. Nealy, M.Div., LCSW, is an out transgender man with over 25 years experience as a clinician, trainer and consultant around LGBT concerns. He is the former director of adolescent & adult mental health and social services at the LGBT Community Center in NYC, and most recently served as the Center's Deputy Director. The foster/adoptive parent of 3 amazing young people, Elijah brings a particular passion to issues of children and youth. In his private practice, he specializes in gender identity concerns with youth, adults, and families, as well as seeing individuals and couples around a wide range of other life issues.

Diane Ehrensaft, PhD, is a developmental and clinical psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area specializing in clinical work with gender nonconforming and transgender children and their families. She has served on the faculty of The Wright Institute, Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley, Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, and Access Institute, San Francisco. She publishes and presents nationally and internationally on the topic of gender development and gender nonconformity, is the author of the forthcoming book, Gender Born, Gender Made, and is on the professional advisory board of Gender Spectrum, a national organization addressing the needs of gender nonconforming and transgender children and youth.

"From Gender Identity Disorder to Gender Identity Creativity" presents a new psychoanalytically-informed developmental theory and treatment paradigm that dispenses with the notion of binary gender categories, replaces it with the concept of a three-dimensional "gender web," challenges the notions of perversion and inversion cast on gender transgressive children and youth, and instead strives to help children discover their gender authenticity. The theory and paradigm call on Winnicottt's concepts of individual creativity and the true and false self, translated into the true gender self, false gender self, and gender creativity. Applied both to the development and to the needed social-psychological supports for gender nonconforming/ transgender children, the workshop explicates the psychic importance of the true gender self, the potential dangers of the false gender self if left untreated, and the role of the clinician in facilitating the child's gender creativity and authenticity, rather than forcing a child to conform to society's expectation for that child based on assigned gender at birth. A child case will be presented to illustrate the true gender self approach and although the focus will be on children, the material will be equally applicable to adult development and clinical work in the emphasis on gender development as an unfolding and fluid life-long process.

Dr. Avgi Saketopoulou, Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist and a psychoanalytic candidate at NYU Postdoc. She is faculty at ICP where she teaches analytic theories on infant and child development, an adjunct clinical supervisor at LIU and runs seminars on analytic theory for child psychiatry residents. She writes and lectures on gender constitution and sexuality, and has a strong interest in regressed mental states. She is in private practice in NYC.

Treatment of transgender individuals is beginning to move away from misguided attempts to 'correct' gender (e.g. Nicolosi, Zucker) to efforts towards understanding gender's psychic meanings. Under the aegis of postmodern theory, contemporary American psychoanalysis emerges as a thinking space within which we can contend with both the complexities and complications of gender (Corbett, Dimen, Harris, Goldner). Work with gender variant children however, continues to be akin to touching a live wire. In a clinical process saturated with value judgments and distended with multiple controversies, anxiety runs amok. As a result, childhood gender is treated monolithically (Stockton). Race and class, two privileged categories of difference vis-à-vis gender constitution, are undertheorized leaving little space to explore how they hue masculinities and femininities. This is especially unfortunate when it comes to child therapy since its staple, working with the family system, offers clinicians privileged inroads into how gender can be mediated by class and race.

To illustrate these points, I will borrow from my work with three different families. All three vary in racial and social class background as well as in their level of empathic understanding of and/or support for their child's struggle. In addition to the complexities of working with families of transgender children per se which I will briefly address, I will discuss how in these cases race and class became intertwined with, and thus further queered, gender. Unpacking this tapestry of meanings was crucial in helping parents metabolize fantasies, conscious and unconscious, that fueled their difficulties with their child's gender atypicality. This presentation will hopefully stimulate a lively discussion with the symposium participants.

Shannon Sennott, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and a co-founder of Translate Gender. Shannon's clinical research and therapeutic concentrations are in concerns related to queer, trans, and gender non-conforming individuals and their families and partners. Shannon is co-author of the article "Translating Gender on Women's College Campuses" published in Transgender Tapestry, Issue 114, Spring 2008. She has recently finished an article, "Not just a Tomboy: The double bind theory and Gender Non-Conforming Identity Development". Shannon is currently working on her first non-fiction book, a collection of multi-media narrative expressions of trans and/or gender non-conforming partnership experiences.

This workshop is designed to help participants in developing personal best practices for working therapeutically with gender non-conforming individuals. We explore clinical counter-transference, fears, and concerns of clinicians in providing mental health services to gender non-conforming people, as well as, examine transphobia, misogyny, and homophobia that can create barriers in a patient client relationship. In addition this program is designed to help participants understand the fears a client may have when entering a therapeutic setting. This workshop emphasizes self-identification and self-determination of gender with supportive communities and environment over the use of pathology and diagnosis (GID).

Tones Smith, is a collective member, curriculum developer and workshop facilitator with the non-profit, Translate Gender. Translate Gender is a collective based, consensus run non-profit organization that works to generate community accountability for individuals to self-determine their own genders and gender expressions. Tones is interested in depathologizing trans and gender non-confoming identities through a model of informed consent and self determination. He is currently working towards his MSW at Smith College School for Social Work.

Arlene Istar Lev, LCSW-R, CASAC, is a social worker, family therapist, and educator whose work addresses the unique therapeutic needs of LGBTQ people. She is the founder of Choices Counseling and Consulting (www.choicesconsulting.com) in Albany, New York. Arlene is on the adjunct faculties of S.U.N.Y. Albany, School of Social Welfare and Empire College. She has authored numerous journal articles and essays including authoring two books: The Complete Lesbian and Gay Parenting Guide (Penguin Press, 2004) and Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and their Families (Haworth Press, 2004), winner of the American Psychological Association (Division 44) Distinguished Book Award, 2006.

This is an advanced clinical workshop which will examine clinical cases that involve ethical dilemmas and complex psychological presentations. The presenters will discuss detailed cases, the clinical issues and therapeutic challenges they faced. The workshop will focus on three clinical cases, one involving issues of writing letters of recommendation for hormonal or surgical treatment when the clinical presentation involves complicating factors that make the therapist hesitate, or resist, supporting the client in undergoing medical treatment or surgery at that moment in their life; a second involving involve a transgender person who is not expressing their authentic gender and remaining closeted; and a third where the WPATH Standards of Care were used flexibly in supporting clients in transition. Discussion will include the influence of the WPATH Standards of Care as guiding principles of care, including departures from the traditional protocol, reasons for doing so, and the treatment outcomes to date. We will also discuss the therapist's personal process, the (imagined) reaction of the trans-activist community, and how therapists manage ethical and paradoxical issues.

Katherine "Kit" Rachlin, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist in New York and a certified sex therapist. She is an experienced clinician as well as an energetic advocate for transgender people, their families and partners. Kit has served on the board of directors of organizations such as FTM-International; The Harry Benjamin Association/World Professional Association for Transgender Health; and the American Psychological Association's Taskforce on Gender Identity. She is the author of many published papers and book chapters on transgender health and well being.

Naomi Greenberg, LCSW, a psychotherapist in private practice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, earned her MSW from Smith College School for Social Work in 2004 where she conducted research on transgender youth. She focuses her clinical work on transgender and gender variant clients, with a subspecialty in working with children and adolescents.

This workshop will explore the impact of the gatekeeping dynamic on the therapeutic relationship. We will examine how the intersubjective space between therapist and client is affected by the client's need for a letter of support from the therapist for medical interventions. To enhance the discussion, clinical case material will be used. This workshop will encourage critical thought and examination of the management of dual roles that often evolve between the therapist and the transgender client.

Andi Pilecki, MS, works in an outpatient community mental health clinic in Pittsburgh that serves the LGBT and HIV positive communities, where she provides counseling primarily to transgender clientele. She is adjunct faculty at Carlow University within the School for Social Change, where she teaches graduate counseling courses. Ms. Pilecki also provides trainings to the community and organizes educational panels for undergraduate and graduate classes on issues impacting the LGBT community.

Lisa Griffin, PhD, is a psychologist in private practice in Charlotte, NC, specializing in gender identity issues. She is also on the adjunct faculty of two local universities and is a social justice activist in her community.

Much has been written about the ethical perils associated with the therapist's frequent role as evaluator and recommender (or gatekeeper) of medical treatment for transgender clients. Less information is available guiding therapists when they are called to perform as advocates for their clients. This presentation will outline several such situations, discussing potential ethical snags and offering a detailed example from the presenter's case experience in which the county department of social services was hostile to treatment recommendations. Details will be shared of interface with social services, guardians ad litem, noncustodial parents, the juvenile justice system, and the school system — and attorneys representing all these parties — as well as mentorship by national and international transgender law and health specialists.

Dr. Andrea Neumann Mascis, PhD,is a psychologist and gender specialist who has been working with transgender and gender variant people and working in trans community in San Francisco and Boston for thirteen years. AndreA is founder and developer of The Meeting Point: a Multidimensional Center for Healing and Growth in Jamaica Plain, MA. The Meeting Point serves the LGBT community, survivors and the disability community, and is growing to meet the unique strengths and needs of queer people and their allies through community activity and personalized approaches to wellness. Andrea's areas of specialty include working with trauma and complex PTSD having directed a women's trauma program for an LGBT agency in San Francisco, and developed specialized trauma curricula for specific populations including homeless and chronically mentally ill people in San Francisco and Boston Work has also included education and training for universities, hospitals, providers, non-profits and community members.

Managing both the impact of surviving trauma and the complexity of gender variance can be a profound challenge. Navigating the intrapsychic and interpersonal demands of identity, relationships and body can be overwhelming and powerful. In this workshop we will identify a framework through which to understand important themes in a complex journey, we will discuss clinical concerns, and we will explore creating a treatment context that can see and meaningfully value the transgender survivor.

Silvia Tenenbaum, EdD (c) C. Psych. (Montevideo, 1960), is a mental health clinician and writer based in Toronto since 1988. She is presently working at Sherboune Health Centre as well as completing a doctoral degree in community psychology at the University of Toronto, where she balances research, publishing and advocacy work for trans-rights, in the full conviction that a secret sorrow itself does not determine outcome. Silvia fully enjoys her own embodiment of exile, diasporic selves, and reproductive choices, while sharing a house with two powerful Lauras.

"Amorosin only plays with Barbies" is an ethnographic account of a gender-divergent child that is being seen together with his parents at Sherbourne Health Centre by a registered nurse, Alma Marinelarena, and a mental health clinician, Silvia Tenenbaum. In Canada, there is a paucity of research and publication about this systematic work in the realm of immigrant/refugees health. This study aims at reducing the existing gap between theories and practice, as a political validation of a silenced occurence."

Alma Marinelarena, RN, B.ScN, is Mexico-Canadian Registered Nurse Born in Mexico that resides in Toronto with her spouse . She devotes much of her life at the Family Health Team at Sherbourne Health Centre in Toronto since 2005 working with trans-individuals and their allies. She was nominated as the best provider of the year by her clients at the GLMA held in Puerto Rico in 2007. Studied Health Sciences at The Universidad Autonoma de Mexico, Biology in Concordia University in Montreal and Nursing Science at the University of Toronto.

Alison Gerig, LCSW, a licensed clinical social worker, has worked with tg and genderqueer communities for over ten years, beginning with serving as director of Philadelphia's first trangender health program at the Mazzoni Center. Her passion for clinically working with gender identity blend with her interests in other intersections of oppression, mind/body awareness,Gestalt practices, and public health advocacy. She currently runs a private psychotherapy practice in Philadelphia and is the Executive Director of a nonprofit providing quality low cost therapy to self identified women.

This workshop is designed to invite a deeper dialogue of our clinical work. We will focus on the clinician's role — our process, growth, and awakenings — not on the "client". We all make mistakes but the sychotherapy field often discourages us from sharing these missteps. In this workshop, we will explore our challenges including the parallel process of our own gender identity development, managing vicarious trauma, our biases/agendas, being multi-partial in the room, and exploring experiences of oppression from a strength's perspective, not from a victimizing frame. Different perspectives will bring up different issues — identifying within a community, being an ally, or having partners, lovers, friends, or family members within the communities.

Tonya Ladipo, LCSW, has a passion for working with and serving people who are oppressed. She has provided therapy services to the transgender and queer communities since 1998. She continues this work in her private practice in Philadelphia, PA.

Finn Brigham, has worked professionally in the fields of transgender youth, homeless youth, and HIV for the past ten years. As a transgender individual herself she sees the trans movement from both a personal and professional angle. She has spoken publicly on topics surrounding HIV and trans individuals, androgyny, and the butch/femme movement.

Five practitioners discuss the challenges and rewards of being a provider for a community that one is also a member of. Bringing both macro and micro lenses to the panel, practitioners will discuss how their own gender identity and personal experience has affected their practice with clients, systems and program development. In search of a dialogue that extends beyond psychiatric adjustment, risk, and victim based rhetoric, panelists will discuss questions such as: How does one challenge outdated and pathologizing notions of trans identity while still meeting clients and systems where they are at? How is one's work potentially complicated and informed by one's own gender identity and experience? When is self-disclosure appropriate with a client? How has one's work with the trans community informed one's clinical perspective and understanding of the larger LGBT community? How does one facilitate trans and gender queer groups to allow for a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and identities?

Heather Gay, LMSW, is a therapist/mental health specialist at the Ali Forney Center who identifies as a lesbian. She is interested in how her life experiences and perspective have informed her work with LGBT youth and vice versa. She received her MSW from New York University.

Jama Shelton, MSW, is a practitioner/administrator/Phd candidate who identifies as androgynous. She is interested in the parallels between finding a "home" in one's gendered self and finding an actual physical home. Her dissertation research will examine transgender identity development among homeless youth. She received her MSW from New York University.

Gretchen Winterkorn, LMSW, is a Femme, queer-identified practitioner partnered with a trans man who uses her identity and experience to facilitate her work with clients. She currently works at The Ali Forney Center with homeless LGBT clients ages 18-24. She received her Master's in Social Work from Hunter College.

Cooper Sabatino, LMSW, is a queer and trans clinical practitioner interested in the ways gender and sexuality intersect and influence professional identity and theoretical frameworks. He is currently working as a therapist at a mental health facility in Brooklyn.

Griffin Hansbury, MA, LCSW, is an analytic candidate and a psychotherapist in private practice and at the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in New York City. A specialist and clinical supervisor in working with trans patients, his writing on the topic has appeared in journals such as Studies in Gender and Sexuality and Psychoanalytic Social Work.

The transsexual body, modified with medical technology, enters the realm of the unreal as it destabilizes notions of binary sex and gender. It can be, for many anxious viewers of it, a body in opposition to nature. "That's not a real man," people say about transsexuals. "I'm not a real woman," transsexuals say about themselves. Anxieties about the real vs. the virtual also arise in relation to cyberspace, where similar arguments are launched against new technologies: "That's not a real experience." This paper explores the places where transsexuality, cyberspace, and anxiety intersect, discussing ways that clinicians and clients can use virtual reality to expand beyond traditional notions of body and self, real and unreal.

Emily Joslin-Roher, LMSW, is a social worker practicing psychotherapy at the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community. She has published, with Darrell P. Wheeler, Partners in Transition: The Transition Experiences Lesbian, Bisexual, and Queer Identified Partners of Transgender Men in the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Social Services.

Transgender individuals often experience a level body awareness that non-trans people do not. This body-consciousness often enters the treatment room, wherein both client and clinician are focused on the changes, or desire for changes, in the patient's body. What happens then when both bodies in the room are in a transformative process? Using case material, this presentation will explore how a clinician's pregnancy brings the clinician's body into the room in ways that are significant to the treatment and to the perspective of the non-trans clinician.

Kimberly Reed, Film Director / Producer, MA. After studying cinema at UC Berkeley (B.A.) and San Francisco State University (M.A.), Kimberly Reed became an award-winning filmmaker (Views of My Father Weeping), worked as a commercial editor, traveled the world directing and producing travel documentaries, and had become an early expert in the nascent field of digital filmmaking and postproduction. She then transitioned genders and did what transsexuals are encouraged to do: she disappeared. Sequestering herself in the world of publishing, she applied her filmmaking knowledge to her position as editor-in-chief of DV Magazine, and established her reputation as a frequent speaker and oft-quoted digital filmmaking expert in publications like the New York Times and USA Today. Prodigal Sons is her first feature-length documentary film. She was selected for the Yaddo Artist' Community, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Workshop, and Al Gore's Current TV Symposium on the Future of Non-Fiction Film. Her work has been featured for four consecutive years at IFP's Independent Film Week, and she was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film.

On the cusp of the theatrical premiere of the multiple award-winning documentary "Prodigal Sons," get a tour of key excerpts from the film and discus them with director/producer Kimberly Reed. The film tells the true story of a transgender woman (Reed herself), her gay brother, and their adopted brother who discovers he's the grandson of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. In addition to engaging specific issues like adoption, mental illness, traumatic brain injury, gender identity, and sexual preference, "Prodigal Sons" gives viewers an intimate look at the universal issues that challenge all families: identity, acceptance, healing, and love. The film opens in NYC theaters on February 26, but you can get a sneak preview of the film many therapists and counselors have called "required viewing" for anyone working in mental health.

Katie Douglass, LCSW. Since 2001, Katie has provided psychotherapy and transgender counseling and education to trans-identified patients at the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center. Since 2006, Katie has served as Director of Mental Health at Callen-Lorde. In recent years Katie has presented on topics such as hormone therapy for Trans-patients with serious persistent mental illness, alternatives to Gender Identity Disorder in health and mental health care settings, and de-marginalizing/ mainstreaming trans-affirmative care in public health settings. Katie also co-authored and promotes Callen-Lorde's informed consent based protocol for hormone care.

Client feedback is an important aspect of any mental health professional's development and continued growth. It's accepted that transference challenges open client feedback in any therapeutic relationship. The special needs and marginalization of Trans identified individuals creates even more barriers to transparency. The need for a letter to access surgery may cause a client to censor criticism of their therapist. Isolation or a sense of limited options for mental health care may lead a client to settle for treatment they are less than satisfied with. Because of the unique power differentials in a therapeutic relationship with gender different/Trans identified client, clinicians can not assume feedback from their clients or fellow professionals is an adequate assessment of their sensitivity and effectiveness.

To address these gaps in feedback I would like to convene and moderate a diverse panel of trans-identified mental health consumers. I will ask panel members to share positive and negative experience they've had in treatment. Panel members will be asked if, what and how they brought these experiences up in their treatment. I will also lead a discussion on what has been helpful as well as unhelpful for panel members in their work with mental health providers. Effort will be made to ensure the panel represents diverse gender identities, reasons for treatments, and cultural/class backgrounds. I will also leave time for a questions and answers from the audience.

Tarynn M. Witten, PhD, MSW, FGSA is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and author of over 30 research papers, book chapters, and news articles relating to transgender and intersex aging. She has given nearly 100 presentations, trainings and panel discussions around issues of transgender/intersex aging worldwide. Along with her co-presenter, she is the editor of a new Johns Hopkins University Press book entitled Challenges in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Aging which is soon to appear. She is also the author of the Tao of Gender, a Taoist/Buddhist perspective on transgender-related challenges.

Clinical work with older adults who are transgender or gender variant involves a complex collection of challenges and struggles, as well as unique rewards. This session will discuss some of the clinical concerns of gender variant older adults, including late life gender transition, expressing gender variance in the elder years without full transition, practical difficulties associated with maintaining ("stealth") transition, and creating space within the LGBT communities as a member of a small and distinct group. The available literature pertaining to transgender and gender variant older adults is scant, though growing. We will discuss some of the challenges and what is known about the unique struggles of mid-to-late life transgender and gender variant individuals. Case examples will be provided. As part of the dialog, the presenters invite workshop participants to bring cases to discuss.

A. Evan Eyler, M.D., M.P.H., FAPA, FAAFP, is a Clinical Associate Professor of Family Medicine and Psychiatry at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, in Burlington, Vermont. Dr. Eyler is a Fellow of the Americal Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Family Physicians, and a recipient of the AAFP Walter H. Kemp Award. Dr. Eyler has been active in transgender medical care for many years, served as Director of Primary Care Services of the University of Michigan Comprehensive Gender Services Program from 1995-2000, and is a co-editor of the textbook, Principles of Transgender Medicine and Surgery.

John L. Bennett, LCSW, is the clinical coordinator for mental health at Callen Lorde Community Health Center, New York City's LGBT Health Center. He is a PhD candidate in clinical social work at NYU and maintains a private practice with LGBT persons in Manhattan.

In certain jurisdictions psychotherapists serve as the gatekeepers to sexual reassignment surgery. Therapists are traditionally charged with assessing the existence of long-term Gender Dysphoria in their transgender patients as the criterion for access to surgery. This presentation explores the case of transwoman, who has been living as a female for more than a dozen years. She chooses sexual reassignment without experiencing dislike of her male anatomy, and privileges instead emergent lived experience as the basis of her decision. The validity of the artificially binary diagnostic concept of Gender Dysphoria is called into question.

Dr. Oren Gozlan, C. Psych. Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst in private practice in Toronto; Adjunct faculty at Adler School of Professional Psychology.

This paper focuses on the question of gender oscillation in a patient who describes dissatisfaction in being embodied in either gender. The theory offered in this paper tries to touch on related but also inherently disjointed aspects of sexuality and human existence such as time, difference and creativity in this case of gender oscillation. I will draw on the works of Winnicott, Kristeva and Verheaghe to posit different ways to think about the representation of oscillation as a problem of difference, jouissance and prohibition. The case will be used to show how the analysis gets caught in this oscillation and how analysis, as an act of psychic revolt, offers a way out of the timelessness of oscillation. Through analyzing the transference with S the paper examines how the concreteness of the sessions mirrors S's inability to "open her suitcase and "play" with feminine clothes". The paper poses the question "can we dream gender that can come out of its encasement?

S.J.Langer, LCSW-R, is a psychotherapist in private practice and writer in New York City. Ze is a graduate of School of Visual Arts and New York University. Hir co-authored article, How Dresses Can Make you Mentally Ill: Examining Gender Identity Disorder in Children was published in Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal. Ze has also worked in non-profit mental health settings and taught at School of Visual Arts, Adelphi University and New York University.

Language is the medium in which we work in treatment. In order for one to give an accounting of oneself, there needs to be language, which will fit that experience. The gender non-conforming community is forced to use language and grammar, which resists acknowledging their existence and experience. This presentation will focus on theoretical and practical implications of present language barriers to expressing a gender-nonconforming life in treatment and in the world and the clinician's function in expanding the patient's vocabulary. We will also discuss the clinical implications of these issues by using case examples. This will include a dialogue on how the lack of language can contribute to feelings of illegitimacy and alienation from oneself. In addition, this gap in our vernacular can act as a stumbling block to treatment instead of the means of creating recognition, understanding and meaning.

Eric Macé,is Professor at the University of Bordeaux II where he teaches sociology, cultural studies and gender studies. He launched a research project Transgender expertises, transgressing medical boundaries in 2009.

In June 2009, the French Ministry of Health made a buyoant annoucement of « the de-psychiatrization of transsexuality » while the long awaited report on the legal, medical, psychiatric and chirurgical practises « of transexualism » by the HAS (Haute Autorité de la Santé) was made available on line. Although implemented to respond to the demand of the non profit trans groups five years ago, the official report proved to be a copy cat of the official and transphobic medical team practices which still rule the lives of transgender and transsexual persons in France. Not only the report concluded that trans people suffer from psychiatric trouble but its poor methodology reached only 10% of the trans people, since many of them manage to do their transition gender ressassignment included with non official teams.

Drawing of the first data coming from the project launched by Eric Macé at the national level « Transgender expertises, transgressing medical boundaries » (in which Marie-Hélène Bourcier is involved as well) this paper ‘s aim is to describe the numerous counterstrategies developped by trans experts to fight noy only psychiatrization but also the stability of the binarisms of a tight and normative sex/gender system supported as well by lacanian psychoanalysis in France.

Far from being restricted to the medical spectrum, our hypothesis is that trans expertise, subcultures and politics challenge dominant gender norms and the control of gender identification either by medecine, psychiatry or psychoanalysis. Since queer or trans practise, be it medical or psychological, has not yet developped in France, is it possible to reclaim and implement a real depsychiatrization and the right to self-diagnosis ? Can French psychoanalytic theory and practice be trans-affirmative? How recent butlerian politics of vulnerabilty and old theories of gender as melancoly and mourning proved to be rather toxic in the French context ? How trans theories and practices or gender and embodiement coming from the trans studies field can help? What about the intrafight in the trans community regarding a dualistic conception of gender versus the proliferative one ?

Marie-Hélène Bourcier, is Queer theorist and activist, she is Associate Professor at the University of Lille III and at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS - Paris) where she teaches queer studies.

Atreyu (Tre) Luna, LMSW, M.Ed., is a social worker and educator whose work focuses on sexual and gender minorities. He works at Choices Counseling and Consulting as a Clinician Trainee, and he also works for Schenectady Community Action Program (SCAP) as an Instructor/Therapist. Tre is a transman who works with transgender clients.

This workshop is framed as a dialogic engagement between a non-trans therapist and a transgender therapist, examining issues pertinent to supervisory processes and mutual peer support. We will focus on issues of client and therapists strengths, identifying transference and counter-transference, and places of divergent experiences and opinions when working with transgender clients. How can a cisgender clinician reassure a new transgender client that they understand what it is like to be trans? Indeed, can they understand? How can a transgender clinician avoid appearing biased — especially to family members and spouses who may not support the transition? For that matter, no matter what your gender, are we not all biased in some way on transgender issues, and if so, how do we address those biases in our practices?

Jack Drescher, MD, is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, New York Medical College, and Training and Supervising Analyst, Wm. A. White Institute. He is a member of the DSM-V Task Force on Gender and Sexual Identity Disorders and co-editor of Transgender Subjectivities: A Clinician's Guide and Sexual and Gender Diagnoses of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM): A Reevaluation.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is in the process of revising its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), with the DSM-V having an anticipated publication date of 2013. The process has generated concern in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, mostly focused on the status of the diagnostic categories of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) (for both children and adolescents and adults). This presentation reviews the history of how homosexuality became a psychiatric diagnosis, only to be eventually removed from the DSM-II in 1973, followed by a history of how the GID diagnoses found their way into DSM-III in 1980 and in subsequent editions.

Suzanne Iasenza, PhD, is on the faculties of ICP, Adelphi University's Postgradute Program in Psychoanalysis, and the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center (PPSC). She maintains a private practice in psychotherapy and sex therapy in NYC.

This presentation will discuss how to gather and utilize sexual history information in individual or couples psychotherapy with transgendered patients. Clinical examples will illustrate how to conduct a thorough sexual history, identify important themes that relate to sexual development, and construct a conceptual therapeutic frame. Discussion will include how to integrate systems, psychodynamic and cognitive behavioral perspectives.

Rhonda J. Factor, PhD, is a clinical psychologist at the New School's Counseling Services and in private practice in NYC. She is also a candidate at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She has worked at the Gender Identity Project, part of Center CARE, at New York's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in NYC and co-coordinated the "Transitions in Academia: Increasing Transgender Inclusiveness on Campus" Conference at SUNY Stonybrook.

Sand Chang, PhD, is a Chinese American, queer, genderqueer, femme-identified Clinical Psychologist. Sand teaches Intercultural Awareness Development at The California School of Professional Psychology in San Francisco, California and has private practice offices in both Berkeley and San Francisco, CA. Sand's specialties include working with transgender and gender variant individuals, eating disorders, and addictions. Sand has worked at the Gender Identity Project in NYC, facilitated FTM support groups, provided training on gender variance issues for college communities and mental health providers, and has a private practice specializing in transgender issues.

Because access to resources and the number of professionals dedicated to treating transgender individuals are limited, working in these communities has the potential to bring up more multiple role issues than in other communities that are more in line with dominant culture. This workshop will speak to the challenge of managing multiple roles in often small and socially interwoven transgender and gender variant communities. Issues addressed will include: maintaining boundaries, confidentiality, managing online personal and professional identities, and the value of transparency when client and therapist occupy similar sociocultural spaces.

Vaughn McLaughlin, LMSW, is a social worker with a focus on individual and group work with youth, especially in LGBTQ communities. A person of trans experience, he is concerned with and active in the struggle for justice for trans and gender-variant people. Vaughn is also a musician who volunteers with the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, a non-profit music and mentoring camp for girls and women.

Often topics related to gender identity are not discussed within therapeutic communities, let alone health care issues that impact gender variant communities. But individuals' interactions with the health care system tie into life experiences, and will likely present during therapy. What do disparities in a medical setting look like and how are they dangerous? Using anecdotes, we will explore unidentified health care needs and how to use the therapeutic setting to support marginalized communities.

Quai Nystrom, MSW, is an educator, with experience developing curriculum and delivering trainings to a range of direct-service providers and medical students. Quai is interested in issues related to inequity and visibility for marginalized communities, including LGTBQ-identified individuals. Currently Quai trains medical students in how to provide gynecological exams and offer services to survivors of intimate partner violence and sexual assault. Additionally Quai has a background in counseling with trauma survivors.

Stacey "Colt" Meier, MA, is a doctoral candidate and teaching fellow in the Clinical Psychology Program at the University of Houston, Houston, TX. Working in association with Dr. Julia Babcock, Colt's major area of research revolves around the female to male transsexual (FtM) community including psychological health, sexual orientation, and the psychological effects of testosterone.

"A transgender individual may experience negative psychological symptoms related to the fact that they do not identify with their genetic sex. If negative psychological symptoms are truly related to gender dysphoria, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) should reduce these negative symptoms by eliminating or reducing the source of dysphoria via a change in secondary sex characteristics, making them more consistent with the individual's identity. A related issue plaguing health care providers working with transgender individuals is how best to handle comorbid psychological issues in the presenting transgender client, such as depression and anxiety. Standard practice has been to treat the comorbid psychological conditions prior to initiating any of the medical steps involved in gender reassignment. The present study examined the use of HRT by female to male transsexuals (FTMs) and various mental health outcomes. Participants were 448 self-identified FTMs from 18 different countries who completed an Internet survey assessing symptoms of depression and anxiety, stress level, perceived social support, and health related quality of life. Rates of suicide attempts and drug and alcohol problems were also examined."

Seth Pardo, MA, is a doctoral candidate and teaching assistant in the Department of Human Development at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Working in association with Dr. Valerie Reyna and Dr. Ritch C. Savin-Williams, Seth's major research interests are the role of identity in medical decision making, adolescent resilience, and the development of transgender adolescents.