Transgender Emergence ─ Therapeutic Guidelines for Working With Gender-variant People and Their Families

Explore an ecological strength-based framework for the treatment of gender-variant clients

This comprehensive book provides you with a clinical and theoretical overview of the issues facing transgendered/transsexual people and their families. Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and Their Families views assessment and treatment through a nonpathologizing lens that honors human diversity and acknowledges the role of oppression in the developmental process of gender identity formation.

Specific sections of Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and Their Families address the needs of gender-variant people as well as transgender children and youth. The issues facing gender-variant populations who have not been the focus of clinical care, such as intersexed people, female-to-male transgendered people, and those who identify as bigendered, are also addressed.

The book examines:

• the six stages of transgender emergence
• coming out transgendered as a normative process of gender identity development
• thinking "outside the box" in the deconstruction of sex and gender
• the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as the convergence, overlap, and integration of these parts of the self
• the power of personal narrative in gender identity development
• etiology and typographies of transgenderism
• treatment models that emerge from various clinical perspectives
• alternative treatment modalities based on gender variance as a normative lifecycle developmental process

Complete with fascinating case studies, a critique of diagnostic processes, treatment recommendations, and a helpful glossary of relevant terms, this book is an essential reference for anyone who works with gender-variant people. Handy tables and figures make the information easier to access and understand.

Visit the author's Web site at http://www.choicesconsulting.com

Arlene (Ari) Istar Lev, LCSW-R, CASAC, CST is a social worker and family therapist, who is the Founder and Clinical Director of Choices Counseling and Consulting (www.choicesconsulting.com) where she has provided individual and family therapy in Albany NY for nearly 30 years. She is also the Director of TIGRIS—The Training Institute for Gender, Relationships, Identity, and Sexuality (www.TIGRISinstitute.com), a professional training program in Albany, New York. Arlene specializes in issues related to gender and sexuality, including working with the LGBTQ couples and families. She is a Credentialed Alcoholism Counselor and a Certified Sex Therapist (ASSECT).

Arlene is a part-time lecturer at the University at Albany, School of Social Welfare where she is the Project Director of the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Project (SOGI). She is an international lecturer on issues related to sex and gender, and has taught at Smith College School for Social Work, Empire College, Vermont College, Union Institute and University, and the California School of Professional Psychology. Arlene has authored over 30 journal articles and book chapters and including authoring two books: The Complete Lesbian and Gay Parenting Guide and Transgender Emergence, which was the winner of the American Psychological Association (Division 44) Distinguished Book Award, 2006.