De la différence des sexes au genre : un cas d’enfant pris dans le projet transsexuel d’un parent

RésuméQuentin, 8 ans, est reçu en psychothérapie dans un contexte de conflits conjugaux exacerbés et de risque de divorce entre ses parents. Surtout, son père vient d’entamer des démarches pour bénéficier d’un traitement hormonal en vue de changer de sexe. À travers le cas de Quentin, nous explorerons les enjeux de la construction identitaire et identificatoire à l’épreuve de la question du genre et de la différence des sexes chez l’enfant dont un parent envisage de changer de sexe et dont l’autre parent est en désaccord avec ce projet.

Quentin, 8 years old, a boy who underwent psychotherapy in the middle of marital conflicts between his parents who were filling for divorce on the account of Quentin's father's project to undergo hormonal therapy to be reassigned a new sex. Through the case study of Quentin, our paper discusses the identity and identification issues at the light of gender and sex differences for a child whom the parent has a transsexual project. According to Freud, the construction of sexual identity is closely related to the Oedipus complex and to the representation of sexual differences. The main oedipal conflicts, rivalry with the same-sex parent and jealousy of the opposite sex parent, are associated with castration anxiety. Thanks to the internalization of the father figure, through identification, the boy renounces his oedipal longing for his mother. In the case of Quentin, the encounter with his oedipal complex was exacerbated by his father's desire to change sex. The psychotherapy of Quentin helped him to overcome the pathological effects of the confusion related to his father's transsexual desire and to successfully negotiate his passage through the Oedipus complex.