TRANSVESTISM AND THE ILLUSION OF SEXUAL METAMORPHOSIS
No matter how much transvestite men feel like women when dressed in women’s clothing and women feel like men when dressed in men’s clothing, they still remain aware that in reality it is not so. To be sure, some do imagine—and if so, then the wish is the originator of the thought—that their skin is softer, their forms rounder, and their movements more gracious than are usual for men, but they know full well, and often are depressed by the fact that they do not physically belong to the desired sex they love. If they did consider themselves actually to be women, whether cross-dressed or not, as persons with megalomania think they are the Messiah or millionaires or even the emperor and pope in one person, then it would be an illusory idea, and the condition would have to be addressed as mental illness, as being insane, as paranoia. Such cases of the illusion of sexual metamorphosis—metamorphosis sexualis paranoica—also do occur, even if only rarely in relation to other delusions.