Robert Stoller

Robert Jesse Stoller (born December 15, 1925 in Crestwood , New York , † September 6, 1991 in Pacific Palisades ) was an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst . He taught as a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles . Stoller is known for his theories concerning the development of gender identity and the dynamics of sexual arousal .

Life

Stoller was the third child of an industrial manager. The family moved to New York City , where Stoller attended high school and began studying medicine at Columbia University in 1941 . Stoller did military service in World War II and received his doctorate from the University of California in San Francisco in 1948 . In 1951 he enlisted in the Korean War Air Force , which granted him psychiatric training and employed him as a psychiatrist on an air force base. After being released, Stoller moved to Los Angeles in 1954 . There he was a member of the faculty at the University of California from 1955 . Stoller was killed on September 6, 1991 in a car accident where he lived in Pacific Palisades. Stoller was married to the doctor Sybil White and they had four children.

Books

Sex and gender

In Sex and Gender (1968), Stoller articulated his rejection of Freud's belief in biological bisexuality. With this he came into conflict with Sigmund Freud's teaching and with the organized psychoanalytic community. He also turned against the surgical sex reassignment on the grounds that it was in reality not a sex change, but an external adjustment of the body to the perceived gender identity with many, often lifelong problems for the clients. Unscrupulous doctors would make a lot of money with it.

Based on his extensive research on transsexuals and on new findings in sex science, he laid out his conviction of a "primary femininity", ie an initial orientation of the cell tissue and later of the psychological identity towards a (in boys initially provisional) feminine development. This early, conflict-free phase contributes to a female core identity in both boys and girls, until a male force becomes present in the boys, which urges the boy to overcome the symbiotic relationship with the mother.

Stoller identified three components in the development of psychological gender identity, which is an innate and unchangeable sense of masculinity or femininity:

biological and hormonal influences
sexual assignment from birth (by the midwife, parents and registry office)
psychosocial environmental influences with similar formative effects.

Stoller asserts that the threat to gender identity corresponds to a threat to self-identity and forces the individual to defend it, with reactions, inner-psychological mechanisms and unconscious strategies, some of which are known as perversions.

In 1968, Stoller made a major contribution to shaping the concept of “ sex and gender ”, which differentiates between biologically predetermined sex and gender roles . In doing so, he was guided by the teachings of Sigmund Freud , who also tried to use psychoanalysis to explain the emergence of a gender identity.

“ Gender identity begins with the knowledge and awareness, whether consciously or unconsciously, that one belongs to one gender and not to the other. Gender role ( gender role ) is the external behavior, which one is in society, the role that you play, especially with other people. "

- Robert Stoller, 1968

Although Stoller was not able to know the later findings of endocrinology (see Klaus Dörner ) and brain research on the embryonic development of gender identity , his theory already anticipated much of it, but when explaining the causes of the sexual identity disorders had to focus on those that occurred after birth Limit conflict.

Perversion: the erotic form of hatred

In his most famous contribution, Perversion. The erotic form of hatred (orig. 1975, German translation 1979), which is considered a standard work on the still too little researched topic of the depth psychological causes of neurotic hatred, Stoller expands on his theory of the inner dynamics of sexual perversion. Stoller argues that perversions as a form of late revenge are an expression of unconscious aggression against a person who in some form threatened the child's core identity.

"I [...] came to the conclusion that perversion arises from the attempt to cope with threats to one's own gender identity, that is to say, the awareness of masculinity and femininity [...]."

- Robert J. Stoller : 1998

Sexual excitement

In his 1979 book Sexual Excitement (German: Sexuelle Erregung ), Stoller finds the same perverse dynamic at work in every sexual excitement on a continuum from open aggression to subtle fantasies. By looking at the unconscious fantasies and not the behavior, Stoller shows a viable way to analyze the mental dynamics of sexuality. Stoller describes the most diverse forms of sexual arousal as " eroticism " in a morally neutral way . He regards homosexuality as a closed complex of behavior that was mostly socially unaccepted at the time and therefore laden with conflict and with similar internal psychological and psychosocial causes, but rather as a range of lifestyles as different as heterosexuality.

Fonts

Sex and Gender: On the Development of Masculinity and Femininity. Science House, New York City 1968.
Splitting: A Case of Female Masculinity . Quadrangle, New York 1973.
Perversion. The erotic form of hatred (= library of psychoanalysis ). 3rd revised edition. Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8379-2391-9 (English: Perversion. The erotic Form of Hatred . New York 1975. Translated by Maria Poelchau).
Sexual excitement. Dynamics of Erotic Life. Pantheon, New York 1979.
Observing the Erotic Imagination. Yale University Press, New Haven 1985.
with Gilbert Herdt : Intimate communications: erotics and the study of culture . Columbia University Press, New York 1990.
Porn. Myths for the Twentieth Century. Yale University Press, New Haven 1991 (based on interviews with actors in the porn industry).
with Ira S. Levine: Coming Attractions: The Making of an X-Rated Video. Yale University Press, New Haven 1993.

literature

Volkmar Sigusch , Günter Grau (Ed.): Personal Lexicon of Sexual Research. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-593-39049-9 , pp. 680-684.

Web links

Literature by and about Robert Stoller in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c Volkmar Sigusch, Günter Grau (ed.): Personenlexikon der Sexualforschung , 2009, pp. 680–684
↑ See on this topic: KJ Zucker: Children with gender identity disorder: Is there a best practice? In: Neuropsychiatrie de l'Enfance et de l'Adolescence. Volume 56, Issue 6, September 2008, pp. 358–364, and Phyllis Burke: Gender Shock. Anchor Books, New York 1996, ISBN 0-385-47718-X .
^ Robert J. Stoller: Perversion. The erotic form of hatred . Psychosozial Verlag, Giessen 1998, ISBN 3-932133-51-X , p. 14 .

personal data
SURNAME	Stoller, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Stoller, Robert Jesse (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH	December 15, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH	Crestwood , New York
DATE OF DEATH	September 6, 1991
Place of death	los Angeles

[Sigusch-1] Volkmar Sigusch, Günter Grau (ed.): Personenlexikon der Sexualforschung , 2009, pp. 680–684

[2] See on this topic: KJ Zucker: Children with gender identity disorder: Is there a best practice? In: Neuropsychiatrie de l'Enfance et de l'Adolescence. Volume 56, Issue 6, September 2008, pp. 358–364, and Phyllis Burke: Gender Shock. Anchor Books, New York 1996, ISBN 0-385-47718-X .

[3] Robert J. Stoller: Perversion. The erotic form of hatred . Psychosozial Verlag, Giessen 1998, ISBN 3-932133-51-X , p. 14 .