Harry Benjamin and Psychiatrists

SUMMARY Harry Benjamin, MD, was a pioneer physician who founded the transgender field and coined the term “transsexual.” Benjamin drew criticism from some in the psychiatric community when he began treating transgendered people with cross-gender hormones and encouragement in their efforts in transitioning. By and large, psychiatrists of this time considered gender dysphoria as a manifestation of significant psychopathology and considered the treatment Benjamin was then prescribing as psychiatrically contraindicated. Rather than discouraging Benjamin, this response simply reinforced his feeling that psychiatry as a discipline lacked “common sense.” The author worked with Dr. Benjamin for 6 years, was to become his heir apparent, but then left the practice to undertake a psychiatric residency. This paper chronicles changes in the author's own life and conceptual thinking about transsexualism during this time. Some years later the author finally learned the true extent of Dr. Benjamin's feelings about these events.