In everyday language, “gender” is often used to signify whether one identifies as male, female, or something beyond these categories. For some, gender represents an expansive field of identity possibilities, shaped by an evolving sense of self. For others, it is synonymous with the biological reality of sex. As a verb, “to gender” signifies an active process—one of division, creation, birth, and generation—pointing to something one becomes rather than simply is.

Through her clinical practice, Patricia Gherovici, PhD has encountered both the unpredictability and the creative potential of gender. She has come to understand the body not as a fixed or given entity but as something assumed through a continuous process of embodiment—a becoming of the body. Many experiences of gender transition reveal that corporeal transformation alone is insufficient; something more is required to reclaim the body and shape a livable life. Drawing on concepts from both ancient and contemporary philosophy, Dr. Gherovici reflects on what her work with trans-identified analysands has taught her as a psychoanalyst.

Patricia Gherovici, PhD, is a psychoanalyst, analytic supervisor, and recipient of the 2020 Sigourney Award for her clinical and scholarly work with Latinx and gender variant communities. She is co-founder and director of the Philadelphia Lacan Group and Associate Faculty, Psychoanalytic Studies Minor, University of Pennsylvania (PSYS), Honorary Member at IPTAR the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research in New York City, Founding Member of Das Unbehagen, co-founder and trustee of Pulsion: The International Institute of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychosomatics, New York, and teaches in the Philosophy Department at the New School for Social Research, New York. Her single-authored books include The Puerto Rican Syndrome (Winner of the Gradiva® Award and the Boyer Prize; Other Press: 2003), Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratizing of Transgenderism (Routledge: 2010), and Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference (Routledge: 2017). She published with Chris Christian: Psychoanalysis in the Barrios: Race, Class, and the Unconscious (Winner of the Gradiva® Award and the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize; Routledge: 2019). She edited with Manya Steinkoler: Lacan On Madness: Madness Yes You Can’t (Routledge: 2015), Lacan, Psychoanalysis and Comedy (Cambridge University Press: 2016), and most recently, Psychoanalysis, Gender and Sexualities: From Feminism to Trans* (Gradiva® Award ; Routledge: 2023), and The Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis and Gender (Routledge, forthcoming in 2026.)