[Sex character of human movement answers in the Rorschach test in transsexual and transvestite patients].

Abstract

As a complement to a former study on the sexual character of the kinaesthetic human movement responses in the Rorschach tests of healthy and neurotic men and women, the same characteristic was investigated in Rorschach records of transsexuals and transvestites from the Psychiatric Out-Patient Department of the University Hospital of Zurich. In none of these groups was the distribution of masculine, feminine and neuter movement responses congruent with that in one of the preceding groups. The anatomically male transsexuals who desired a change of sex to female (TXmw) gave considerably more interpretations of the opposite or goal sex than did the anatomically female (TXwm). The two transsexual groups TXmw and TXwm do not constitute mirror images of each other. Whereas the mean experience type of most groups was not far from ambiequality, the TXmw and the male transvestites (TVmw) were decidedly introverted. All three of the newly studied groups gave more space responses than would be expected in a "normal" Rorschach record, especially the TXwm and the TVmw. The difference in the frequency of space responses between the TXmw and TXwm was statistically significant.