Psychotherapists Stella O’Malley and Sasha Ayad take a look at gender from a psychological perspective in their podcast Gender: A Wider Lens.
Is gender identity a facilitation of development and expression of creativity, or can it be a defense against painful existential realities of living in a human body? What can we discover about masculinity, femininity, identity, gender performance, and sexuality when we peer beneath the surface and dive into a deeper psychological exploration? What is the relationship between body, mind, identity, culture, and psyche?
With interviews, discussions and new perspectives, this podcast series is well worth listening to. You can find it on your favourite podcast player, or you can listen via YouTube.
We would recommend the whole series, but particularly useful episodes include:
Episode 2 – Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria
On the back of Lisa Littman’s paper outlining a new demographoc of young people expressing a cross-sex identity, Stella and Sasha explore what this cohort looks like, and how it differs from the previous presentations of gender distress
Episode 5 – Hormonal Intervention
Endocrinologist Dr Will Malone talks to Stella and Sahsa about hormonal treatments for gender dysphoria, the changes in approach in The Endocrinology Society guidelines and the lack of evidence underpinning the use of puberty blockers and cross sex hormones in gender dysphoric adolescents.
Episode 7 -Collective Collusion
Is no therapy better than bad therapy? How the concept of collective collusion, where a therapist colludes with their client in a belief, actually keeps the client stuck in their thinking patterns. The difficulties in person centred therapy when dealing with distress about gender.
