Ana Tomčić uses the case of the modernist writer and film critic Bryher to discuss how psychoanalysis viewed trans identities and trans trainees in the 1920s and 1930s.
They were the child of a shipping magnate and one of the richest people in the UK. Roughly since the age of four, and possibly before that, they expressed a deep wish to be a boy. They grew up on “boys’” novels and adventure tales. They developed a taste for literature and history, partly because the gender fluidity of ancient societies and Elizabethan theatre allowed for more expansiveness than the world in which they were forced to inhabit: the turn-of-the-century upper-middle-class British society. Just after World War I, they fell in love with the American poet Hilda Doolittle. During their decades-long relationship, they formed a household with their friend and occasional partner Kenneth Macpherson, a bisexual man. Bryher and Macpherson formally adopted H.D.’s daughter Perdita. By today’s standards, the trio were a queer, polyamorous family raising a child. They also made films together, founded the influential, progressive film magazine Close Up and profoundly influenced each other’s writing. However, the group of queer writers and filmmakers shared another common interest: psychoanalysis.
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