The Gender Beyond Sex

About the Book

Hidden beyond our sexual gender there exists a biological duality in how humans experience time, which Pos calls time gender. Alphas preferentially focus on the here and now and experience their past and future as situation-oriented. In contrast betas selectively focus on their unified past and future and are often inattentive to the present. Pos collected a substantial body of data to demonstrate the origin and generality of his theory.

It is almost inconceivable that this duality in personality remained unnoticed before. This is likely due to the fact that we often describe the behavior of men and women as expressing their sexual gender while it actually expresses their time gender.

The book describes how these two temporal perspectives begin to express themselves around age 6, when the child's autobiographic memory becomes active. They set the course for further personality development, including self-esteem, mood regulation, identity, thinking, education, occupation, social behavior in general, and sexuality, partnering and parenting in particular. As with so many brilliant ideas, those of Pos are amazingly clear and easy to grasp so that a lay person can easily grasp his tightly crafted compelling theory. Readers soon will see themselves and others in this book, which probes issues deeply. The book has special implications for counselors, it especially applies for those doing marital counseling, child or adolescent counseling, and vocational or educational counseling.

Toward the end, Pos gives his view on alpha/beta personality development an evolutionary perspective. This is an oeuvre unto itself. It is clear that Pos has woven not only one of the most comprehensive personality theories since Sigmund Freud gave us psychoanalysis, Carl Jung analytical psychology, and Jean Piaget cognitive psychology. He has presented it in a single volume.

About the Author

Robert Pos was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1927, obtained his MD at the University of Amsterdam in 1951, and emigrated to Canada in 1954. After a junior internship at the Toronto General Hospital, he specialized in psychiatry. In 1958, he led the way to opening the Queen Street mental hospital to the community. In 1962, he joined the Toronto General Hospital, did research of narco-analysis and LSD-25 in psychotherapy, and obtained his PhD at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, in 1963.

He then developed the Informational Underload Theory of Psychotic Decompensation for which he received the national Research Award 1964 of the Canadian Mental Health Association wherupon he opened a neuro-physiological laboratory in the Banting Institute. In 1968, Pos was made the Toronto General Hospital's first Psychiatrist-in-Chief and in 1973 became Professor of Psychiatry. During his sabatical year in 1975-1976, he worked as Chairman of the Editorial Board on an undergraduate psychiatric textbook which was published in 1980.

In 1979, Pos became Director of Psychiatry at the local mental hospital in Owen Sound, Ontario, which he eventually turned into a psychiatric unit of the local general hospital. In 1982, he joined in Vancouver the Forensic Psychiatric Services Commission of British Columbia. Soon he became Psychiatrist-in-Chief of its Forensic Psychiatric Institute in Port Coquitlam BC, and then Director of its entire Adult Clinical Services. He also became Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia. As expert witness he was involved in many court cases. However, policy differences forced Pos to leave the Forensic Service in 1987, wherupon he started a private practice in Vancouver with emphasis on long-term therapy.

While he had become aware that forensic patients experience time in two distinct ways, early in private practice he realized that this applies to all people and thus began his present research. After retiring from practice in September 1997, he continued to work on his manuscript and published The Gender Beyond Sex as an e-book in March 2004 in preparation for the present book edition.

For more information, please see:

robertpos.info