David Reimer

David Reimer Case Study
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David Reimer Case Study
Prompt #1
David Reimer’s case study presents a violation of moral rights during treatment by a healthcare provider leading to the augmentation of the child after a botched circumcision procedure. This case reveals that psychologist John Money exploited the opportunity to convince emotionally distraught parents to consent to an unethical sex-changing surgery that changed Reimer from a boy to a girl to satisfy her gender realignment beliefs. Although he recorded the entire process and successive evaluations of the patient as successful, he ignored all the struggles experienced by Reimer to advance her concept that nurture was superior to nature in determining one’s gender identity. As a result, this misconduct led to a conflicted life for Reimer, who ended up procuring another surgery to restore his genitalia and eventually committing suicide. Erickson’s psychosocial theory best illustrates these outcomes by indicating that “an internal maturational plan and external social demands” influence a person’s personality development (Kail & Cavanaugh, 2018, p. 12). Interfering with Reimer’s natural gender identity as an infant triggered the complex psychological consequences that led to a struggle-filled life and premature death. Thus, Reimer’s outcome illustrates the result of unethical approaches to research.
Prompt #2
While determining his sample and sampling approach for executing his study, Money used purposive sampling to identify David Reimer as the sample for his gender identify research. Campbell et al. (2020) indicate that the approach uses a small and convenient sample that meets all the requirements of a study. In this case, the researcher wanted to prove that nurture influences gender identity. As a result, targeting David Reimer, a boy whose penis had been destroyed through a failed circumcision, enabled him to use this patient as a case study. John Money recognized that Reimer was still an infant, presenting an ideal age for gender realignment and sufficient time to provide valuable data for the research. Thus, he wanted to determine how Reimer’s gender identity would unfold throughout the different developmental stages of his lifespan. Unfortunately, his study failed despite having an ideal sample and sampling approach because of the struggles experienced by the participant. These failures illustrate Kail and Cavanaugh’s (2018) observations that certain internal and external aspects must remain in sync for a person to successfully overcome different developmental stage-related challenges and progress to the next one. Reimer’s unsuccessful advancement led to his conflicted life and eventual suicide, confirming the procedure as life-limiting.
Prompt #3
John Money’s study involving David Reimer reflects the principles of a longitudinal study design. The researcher started investigating and inferring the participant’s identified changes from the vagi...