Skip to Main Content
3
Views
5
CrossRef citations
Altmetric

Article

From Moral Malevolence to Autonomous Performance

Pages 156-169
Published online: 28 Dec 2017
 
Translator disclaimer

What does it mean to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or intersex within social contexts that present simplistic, often banal, definitions of gender and presume heterosexuality as the norm? Various coalitions of lesbian, feminist, gay, and more recently gender ambiguity liberation movements have sought to address these questions from an activist stance. The landscape of psychotherapeutic theory as it applies to gender and sexuality has the chance of being reshaped by over three decades of activism and liberation. This article seeks to contribute to a transactional analytic framework for understanding and working with gender and sexuality by referring to contemporary ideas from outside our discipline, in particular, queer theory. The discussion involves a queer examination and critique of selected transactional analysis literature and a guide to a transactional analytic therapy informed by queer concepts for clients of nonheteronormative sex/gender/desire.

Additional information

Author information

Robert Trett

Robert Trett, R.N., M.Sc., is registered nurse specializing in the treatment of personality disorder as well as a psychotherapist who, being gay himself, has an interest in establishing gay affirmative psychotherapy services for gay and lesbian clients. Over the past 10 years he has become increasingly invigorated by ideas from postmodernism and queer theory. He is a Certified Transactional Analyst (clinical) and a member of the New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists. For the last 3 years he has been living and working in Melbourne, Australia, where he is a senior clinician for intensive outreach at the Personality Disorder Service for the State of Victoria.