Personality and Being Transgender

How can we describe the personalities of transgender people? We are all different in our own ways but are there similarities in the aggregate? Do pathological disorders of personality contribute to transgender causation and, if so, which ones? We get accused of all kinds of disorders — everything from pathological fetishes to delusions to just plain being gender confused. There have been some scientific and pseudo-scientific studies to address some of the personality accusations. You should know about them, just in case you need a scientific bodyguard of facts or need to debunk the pseudoscience. For the past eight months or so, I have been intensely studying the literature on transgender personalities and pathological personality disorders because of experiences I described in a previous post on narcissism. It is personal for me as well as professional.

Activity Level

Measuring activity.

The simplest characterization of personality is how active you are in childhood. Psychologists simply put cradles on weight scales and observe how the weight fluctuates with infants in the cradles. In adults, we can just ask them to report behaviors that indicate activity, using self-reporting paper and pencil forms (Campbell and Eaton, 1999). Activity level is a primitive characteristic which is believed to begin at birth and continue into adulthood to contribute to what we perceive as personality (Briley & Tucker-Drob, 2014). There are genetic twin studies and biomarkers (Rankinen & Bouchard, 2012) which vary with activity level. We know that males and females differ in activity level with the caveat that such comparisons may be influenced by social forces. Males tend to be more active and females are less active. Transgender people tend to have activity levels that mirror their congruent gender, rather than their sex assigned at birth. That is, trans women  are less active than their male peers and that trans men  are more active than their female peers. Surprisingly, in one paper where all three conditions were measured, the trans men  were typically more active than all three groups: natal females, trans women  and even natal males (Turan 2015).

Personality Studies

The gold standard in personality research is the “Big Five” which describes the five dimensions of personality. It was developed by several researchers, mainly starting in the 1980s. The Big Five was determined by asking lots of people about a long list of behaviors and performing cluster analysis to see which behaviors co-occurred. The clusters were given names, based on inspection of the clusters. The Big Five dimensions of personality are: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. All but the last are readily understandable by their names but neuroticism does not mean what it sounds like; neurosis used to be the term for a mental disorder and was used that way by psychiatrists to describe maladaptive learned behavior. Neuroticism in this context just means emotional stability and changeableness in reaction to stressful conditions. Studies comparing males and females indicate that being female correlates with measurements of conscientiousness, agreeableness and emotional stability. (Lippa, 1995) Congruent gender tends to be correlated with sex assigned at birth; being transgender is the exception. From the Big Five, Lippa derived a Gender Diagnosticity scale that correlates with occupation, activities and hobbies. This Gender Diagnosticity scale indicated that trans women tend to be more feminine and trans men  more masculine (Lippa, 2001). To summarize, this line of evidence demonstrates that transgender personalities differ in terms of Gender Diagnosticity towards their congruent gender rather than their sex assigned at birth. There are two other salient personality studies indicating differences in personality. Trans men tend to be higher in cooperation and lower in novelty seeking while trans women  are higher in self-transcendence (Miyajima, 2014). Self-transcendence is the near spiritual ability to go beyond to a higher level of development and consider the universal. The idea of self-transcendence is obviously pretty squishy and is derived from some of Maslow’s ideas and humanistic psychology, so it is much less scientific. But this fits pretty well with descriptions of third gender category Shamans in North American native tribes and the fifth gender category of the Bugis, the Bissou, in southeast Asia. You might recall that the Bissou are spiritual leaders in their culture and have forged a truce with Muslim spiritual leaders, since the Bugis are predominantly Muslim.

  The second personality study worth mentioning was performed by Gomez-Gil (2013) in Spain using some non-standard behavioral dimensions. On self-reports, transgender people scored higher in independence and self-centeredness. As in the first study, profiles of transgender people were closer to their congruent gender than might be assumed by their sex assigned at birth. Trans women scored higher in spiritual acceptance and sentimentality. Trans men scored higher in opportunism, being daring and confident, and lower sentimentality.

Pathological Personality Disorders

And now for the transgender personality studies that typically are trying to link personality pathology to being transgender. You should be aware that they are out there.

Transgender people have been pathologized by suggesting associations with diagnosed personality disorders, in particular: borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and dissociated personalities disorders. These are all associated with childhood abuse but there are no indications that being transgender is due to abusive conditions. I certainly cannot recall such abuse in childhood but then I kept my congruent gender a secret. In fairness, these disorders are the extremes of particular personality traits. For example, we all need some narcissism to help one express oneself, so a little narcissism is a good thing. Below, I will explain what these personality disorder are about and evaluate some of the studies. I will also tell you about the Man Who Would Be Queen controversy in which transgender people were pathologized by psychologists and psychiatrists because they dared to criticize the transgender theory, methodology and legitimacy of the data collection methods used. This controversy shows that if some mental health providers and others are stressed they will use accusations of pathology to silence critics.

The main feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD) is fear of abandonment which interferes with relationships and may end up in attempted suicide. Even a short separation, such as a business trip can trigger this fear. This fear is typically due to mistreatment by borderline or narcissistic parents although a predisposition may also be involved based on genetic studies. Borderlines may rapidly go from expressing positive feelings (love) to negative feelings within a few hours without provocation. In order to avoid abandonment, borderlines may discard those that they love in a “preemptive strike.” The borderline phenomenon is real and is currently getting increased attention as BPD abuse victims mount up and ameliorative treatments for the borderline have been developed using operant conditioning. Just run a search on YouTube (I follow Berges and Durvasula). A study in 1985 (Murray) concluded that being transgender was a subset of borderline personality pathology based on responses to Rorshach, or inkblot tests. In such tests, patients look at ambiguous inkblots and are asked to free associate. Such tests are useless for diagnostics since the “test” has no scientific basis (Wood, 2000) but some mental health professionals still are trained on it. Studies after the Murray study tended to drop borderline and mainly center around narcissistic personality disorder which is a sister condition. We can conclude from the established weakness of the Rorshach study methodology that there is no evidence that borderline personality disorder does provides the basis for being transgender.

Lachman (1982) traced the history of narcissist personality disorder from Freud and concluded that narcissism was a psychodynamic mechanism used to defend a precarious sense of gender. Narcissism is a sister diagnosis to borderline personality disorder, and overlaps with it with regard to behaviors. The most common form of narcissism is grandiose narcissism, the criteria for which include grandiosity, lack of empathy, sense of entitlement and manipulative behavior. As with borderline, talk about narcissists and the emotional victims they leave behind is very popular. Again, just search on YouTube. One salient characteristic of narcissism is that if a narcissist suffers shame they quickly exhibit narcissistic rage. There is one study that tried to relate being transgender to narcissism experimentally, Hartman (1997) could not confirm narcissist pathology based on a survey of transgender patients although he tried very hard. He used “Bonsai” statistics to divide transgender participants into two clusters, one high in narcissism, the other not. (Bonsai statistics is the term I use to reflect the deliberate mis-categorization and deletion of data in order to get desired results, much like bonsai trimming of plants for artistic purposes.) Then said that the group without narcissism probably had it anyway. So, this study does not support a narcissistic basis for being transgender.

In response to the outcry over the book, The Man Who Would Be Queen in 2003, several psychiatrists and other defenders accused transgender critics of “narcissist rage” in an attempt to pathologize them and silence them. The background here is that the author, J. Michael Bailey, did not seek approval for the transgender “research” reported in this book from his employer Northwestern’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). Federal law requires that all human research receive an IRB approval or at least an IRB waiver. Transgender critics of this book, including several prominent academic transitioned transgender people, accused Bailey of unethical behavior. Northwestern responded to the criticism by sending Bailey a letter which seemed to defend him but they were really defending themselves against a potential research shutdown by the Feds. At the time, I wrote that people knowledgeable of IRB lingo could see that he was really put on notice that in future he should clear such data gathering by the IRB. Use of narcissism by academic psychologists and psychiatrists was an attempt to silence the transgender critics by pathologizing them. This was obviously unprofessional and a violation of the American Psychiatric Association rules against armchair diagnosis without actually examining the “patient.” (This rule was waived for President Trump because one exception to it is imminent danger.) The behavior of these professionals was a shot across the bow for any trans person to criticize publications of their school of thought, led by Ray Blanchard. Rosalind Rini of Indiana University expressed it well:

“first trans persons are called mentally ill for wishing to transition, then they are treated to discrimination and prejudice from the medical, legal, and employment institutions, and finally they are called doubly mentally ill for noticing and objecting to their pathologization and persecution. While not the most serious of the problems produced by transphobia, medical professionals calling trans persons narcissistic constitutes a historically humor-less irony.”

(Here is a Transgender Community News article on Bailey’s book.)

Personality dissociation is commonly discussed by some mental health professionals as contributing to being transgender (Kersting, 2003). This phenomena used to be called multiple personalities. If you saw the movie, The Three Faces of Eve, you saw a story about multiple personalities based on a true story. Basically, it involves two or more personalities that can be called forth from a single person. Familiarly, the basis presumed for this phenomena is abuse during childhood. But the existence of personality dissociation is controversial even in psychiatry. The unique feature of this dissociation of personalities is that the person does not remember events witnessed by other of their personalities. This is typically not true for transgender people who can recall the details of crossdressing or cross-presentation. Since the release of the movie, the fact pattern of the story has become unraveled.

Attempts to link personality dissociation and being transgender have largely failed. Kersting (2003) found that the standard survey used to detect dissociation were inappropriate for transgender people since one item on the survey they used involved “feeling disconnected from parts of the body” which is salient for many transgender people for different reasons from classic dissociation phenomena. One of the results of this study was yet another report that transgender children and teenagers are subject to both violent and psychological abuse during childhood because parents object to transgender behavior. Abuse of this kind by parents, family and community is well documented. The abuse occurs as a result of transgender behavior but being transgender cannot be proven to be a result of this abuse (Roberts, 2012).

Absolution Studies

Finally, there have been some personality studies which absolve being transgender from being based on pathological phenomena. Johnson (1990) found no relation between transgender people and indicators of psychological disturbance. Haraldson (2000) found that transgender people have low levels of self-rated psychopathology on personality tests, a finding that he said casts doubt on the view that being transgender is a severe mental disorder.

Summary

In summary, there do seem to be differences between transgender people and controls on personality measures, including activity level, gender diagnosticity scales derived from the Big Five personality clusters and other personality descriptors. These studies seem to indicate that profiles of transgender people are more like their congruent gender than the gender assigned at birth using cisgender cultural rules. Personality studies do not, however, indicate that being transgender is derived from a personality disorder.

From a personal point of view, I am learning about myself from experiences with those with personality traits that can be pathological. I am learning that I may be vulnerable to abuse from those with these traits because I am an empathetic person, so I need to be on my guard. But I would rather be empathetic than insensitive.

References

Lippa, 1995, J Person Soc Psych;

Lippa, 2001, Arch Sex Behav;

Miyajima, 2014, Psychiatr Res;

Gomez-Gil, 2013, Psychiatr Res;

Murray 1985,J. Pers. Assessment;

Wood, 2000, J. Clin. Psych;

Lachman, 1982, Psycho Anal Rev,

Hartman 1997, IJT;

J. Michael Bailey, 2003 The Man Who Would Be Queen;

Rini, 2013, comments.

Kersting, 2003, J Nerv Ment Dis;

Roberts, 2012, Pediatrics;

Johnson, 1990, Arch Sex Behav;

Haraldson, 2000, Acta Psychiatr Scan;

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Tags: featured, personality, Transgender

Category: Transgender Body & Soul