“Quite frankly, my research on autogynephilia was biased.” This astonishing admission from trans-advocate, Felix Conrad, is prompted by an e-mail from a young reader who has fallen into clinical depression because she believes she is not transgender, but has a fetish. Chasing down his own secret fears of fetishism and delusion, Felix Conrad decides to throw LGBT politics to the wind and launch the world’s first objective analysis of the two most common alternative transgender narratives. H...

‘Autogynephilia’ is an important guide to understanding and living with femephilia. Not only is it of existential importance for a femephiliac to understand their sexuality and what it means, but it can become crucial for their mental health should they face a gender identity crisis. The book deals, therefore, with both scientific questions such as the relationship between autogynephiliac behaviour and transvestic; practical questions such as ‘how to keep your wife/girlfriend satisfied sex...

This book is based on the idea that a transgender person's interpretation of concepts like 'femininity' and 'transgender' can either increase or reduce gender dysphoria. As Conrad demonstrates, theories such as feminine essence - while seeming helpful - add an urgency and intensity to dysphoria and create a bias towards non organic treatments. Conrad concludes that if certain concepts have a negative effect on gender dysphoria then there must be others that are positive. Thus Conrad decons...

Felix Conrad explores the grey area where sexology meets transgender theory in a book which has three purposes: 1) To decide on a definitive scientific name for sexual behaviour that has been described as everything from autogynephilia to sissification, female embodiment to transgender. 2) To categorise said behaviour in purely sexological terms, examining its compatibility with various labels such as orientation, paraphilia and fetish. 3) To explore the viability of a purely sexological d...

This controversial book is a veritable 'no one here gets out alive'. Radical feminists, religious conservatives and transgender theorists all come in for criticism as Conrad expounds the idea that the transgender community needs to shore up the transgender claim to womanhood. Conrad argues that what is needed is a rational, scientific explanation that goes beyond 'gender is whatever you identify as'. No doubt readers will have strong feelings about Conrad's own theory of transgender womanh...

Lacan's psychoanalytic take on what makes a pervert perverse is not the fact of habitually engaging in specific "abnormal" or transgressive sexual acts, but of occupying a particular structural position in relation to the Other. Perversion is one of Lacan's three main ontological diagnostic structures, structures that indicate fundamentally different ways of solving the problems of alienation, separation from the primary caregiver, and castration, or having limits set by the law on one's j...

Placed in a historical context, sexuality was once so prominent in psychoanalytic writing that sexual drive and psychoanalysis were synonymous. The exciting discovery of childhood sexuality filled the literature. Then other discoveries came to the fore until sexuality slipped far in the background. This book evokes the excitement of the original discoveries of childhood sexual experience while linking childhood sensuality and sexuality to adult attachment, romantic, and lustful love. This ...

This book is the author's 1939 medical thesis and is dedicated to medical practitioners, paediatricians, and parents without prior knowledge of psychoanalysis. The author's aim was to sensitise people to the unconscious dimensions of many problems in children. She demonstrates here, through sixteen case studies, how often children's difficulties at school and at home - be they behavioural or due to impaired learning abilities - are the expression of psychological issues linked with their d...

Purple Prose: Bisexuality in Britain is the first of its kind: a book written for and by bisexuals in the UK. This accessible collection of interviews, essays, poems and commentary explores topics such as definitions of bisexuality, intersections of bisexuality with other identities, stereotypes and biphobia, being bisexual at work, teenage bisexuality and bisexuality through the years, the media's approach to bisexual celebrities, and fictional bisexual characters. Filled with raw, honest...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER WITH NEARLY A MILLION COPIES SOLDAre you a highly sensitive person?Discover how to better understand yourself and create a fuller, richer life with this groundbreaking classic and internationally bestselling, life-changing guide by Dr. Elaine Aron, the research and clinical psychologist who first identified the Highly Sensitive trait, as well as an HSP herself.Revised and Updated with New ...

One of our bestselling and most respected cultural critics, Naomi Wolf, acclaimed author of The Beauty Myth and The End of America, brings us an astonishing work of cutting-edge science and cultural history that radically reframes how we understand the vagina—and, consequently, how we understand women.A "New Biography," Vagina is at once serious, provocative, and immensely entertaining—a radical and endlessly fascinating exploration of the gateway to fema...

Harvard psychologist and TED star Amy Cuddy reveals how to unleash your boldest self to heighten your confidence, influence others, and perform at your peak.Have you ever left a nerve-racking challenge and immediately wished for a do over? Maybe after a job interview, a performance, or a difficult conversation? The very moments that require us to be genuine and commanding can instead cause us to feel phony and powerless. Too often we approach our lives' biggest hur...