Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology

by Michael Dillon

SELF: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology considers the psycho-physical mechanisms and reactions in human nature and destiny. This book is composed of seven chapters and begins with a description of the complexity of human body and mind, specifically their physical basis and nature of functioning. These topics are followed by a presentation on the issues of homosexuality and hermaphrodism in human, as well as the role of endocrine system in these issues. The discussion then shifts to the psychiatric and psychological aspects of diverse human personality. A chapter examines the psychological distinction between male and female mind functioning. The last chapter focuses on the central problem of human ethics, the so-called ""free will."" This book will prove useful to psychologists, psychiatrists, and research workers who are interested in human nature.

Genres: LGBT, Transgender, Nonfiction, History, Philosophy, Gender, Biography

130 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1946

About the author

Born Laura Maud Dillon, Dillon tranistioned from female to male between 1939 and 1949.

Studied at Oxford, attended medical school, and traveled the world aboard the British Merchant Navy as a ship's surgeon.

He is the first white European man to be ordained in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, taking the name Lobzang Jivaka.

Reviews

[C. B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dillon was a physician and trans man born in England in 1915. Self is his argument for the right of access to means of medical transition, such as cross-sex hormones and affirmative surgeries. The text is interesting for being an early call for trans rights written by a trans person, just a few years before the term ‘transsexual’ was coined in English. While the ideas of activists and sexologists from Karl Heinrich Ulrichs to Havelock Ellis prefigure many of Dillon’s, here he reinterprets them to fit his own experience (though he never ‘outs’ himself). Moreover, while Dillon rests much of his argument on endocrinological and sexological research, he is also attentive to ethical concerns —to the literary and almost spiritual resonances of transition. He quotes Alexander Pope and Plato, and in Part II of the book he considers personality, the origin of genius, and free will. In this, he memorably attacks psychoanalysis for reducing personhood to a formula, arguing that we can never unlock the mysteries of ourselves, let alone those of others (96). We thus need unending mutual compassion. Here, Dillon configures a queer agency which encompasses, to an extent, a politics of identity, but goes beyond it to speak to a broader philosophical and spiritual consciousness. A commendable piece of history.

[Sarah Cavar]

Impossible to rate because it's so dated (1946) but still fascinating as an object of the history of science, especially given its author's distinction as the first trans man to receive a phalloplasty. Read his life as part of the text and see an incredible, sometimes-frustrating dance with progressive argumentation and an over-reliance on what would now be known as cissexism and heterosexism, as well as misogyny, so as to compensate for the vulnerability he'd face if his personal history was widely known.

This one wasn't nearly as relevant to my independent project on transbutch experiences as I thought, but in a way I'm glad: as early as 1946, trans people were –– gasp –– able to write about more topics than just the fact that we were trans!

[Jabberwocky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I became interested in reading this book while researching Queer historical figures. It's during this time that I learned about Michael Dillon.

Both a Doctor and a trans man living at the start of the turbulent 20th century, he struck me as a rather intresting figure to learn more about, so I was delighted when I found out he had not just one, but two books.

The book itself is a defence of Queer people, especially of trans people, in that he essentially argues the "born that way" case, mostly from an endocrinological, but also from a philosophical stand point.

The language (and the science) is quite outdated, to the point that from a modern standpoint it is a little offensive to read, so much so that it actually becomes quite humorous by accident on occasion. (There are degenerates left, right and center in this one!)

I quite enjoyed the first part of the book and found that I could agree with many of the ideas the author expressed. One of the most interesting things to read about was the process of a trans person essentially using science to explain their experience and existence, when there where yet no words to describe it.
Knowing the Author's background (he is not out in the book and was sadly later outed against his will) and seeing the passionate way he writes about the subject, one gets the impression that it must have been a very lonely and upsetting time to be different.

I sadly cannot say I enjoyed the last part of the book, as it took a rather unexpected and extremely sexist turn. He essentially says that women are the irrational, lesser developed counterpart to men, that the women's rights movement is nonsense and that their only purpose is in homemaking. 🤢🤮

I suppose given the time period this was written in, I should not be to surprised by this mindset, but considering that Mr. Dillon used to be believed to be a woman himself and knowing he therefore understands patriarchal structures intimately, he really ought to have known better.

Consider me disappointed.

It remains to be seen if I shall read the second book.

[heptagrammaton]

At its most recommendable aspect as reading, interesting as a cultural and scientific snapshot. With regard to its addressing of trans healthcare, mostly tackling its advocacy from the physician's point of view of therapeutic efficacy, all carefully oblique, endlessly muddled in the stereotyped mishmash understanding of queerness of the early 20th century in the line of thought of Krafft-Ebbing. Plenty of superior medical depersonalizing, which I foolishly expected/hoped wouldn't be there. Alternately said, very 'I received an upper-class education in early 1900s Britain'.

A little bit of a fascinating stance on free will at the end. The rest of the philosophizing I thought florid and watery, and too concerned with needing to first justify its own presence in the text.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Small parts of this work possess merit, I think, as a representation of the state of the popular discourse on endocrinology and genetics as they relate to anthropology and psychology, in the 1940s (in which decade endocrinology was at last coming of age). However, other large parts of it are, to be blunt, rather aimless and unfocused philosophical meanderings which seek to address essential questions regarding the theory of mind and free will (for example) without ever really managing to develop these questions as well as any number of contemporaries already had. Such that, for me, this is what might have been an adequate medical treatise, but which chooses instead in practice to be a rather unfocused and poorly developed philosophical treatise with scattershot medical observations strewn about within.

I came to it, naturally enough, by way of the author's status as a transman who might have insight on contemporaneous endocrinology and its implications for his nature and his journey. But personal observations were almost entirely absent, and scientific observations were likewise strikingly undeveloped and messily reported (in favour of a lot of bad pop philosophy).

It is also very strikingly and virulently misogynist, for its time. One would think it were written in the mid-18th century, rather than the mid-20th century. And I quote,

the rational part of woman has deteriorated somewhat, or perhaps we should say, has not evolved, so that in matters outside her own home, as in household affairs, she has been so long wont to, she trusts to her "intuition" and ignores cold logic as something quite beside the point with regard to what she knows and what she does not know.

So make of that what one will. For my part, I found the utterly blatant investment of the author in a theory of the inherent intellectual and moral inferiority of women to be one of the more fascinating characteristics of this "time-capsule". Albeit an utterly reprehensible one, which speaks very poorly of the author, whose bigoted attitudes towards women seem to belong more in the mouth of a rather backward Elizabethan, than in the mouth of a mid-20th century scientist.