I am afraid that I cannot give a thoroughgoingly authoritative answer to the question posed in the OP. However, you will find that the more thoroughly educated therapists out there very rarely refer to just one source of information on a subject. They are also a lot better at using their own judgement to resolve complex problems. If real research continues pointing to transsexualism as a legitimate condition, then it should become ever easier to get adequate care through the better therapists out there.
If you're seeing a therapist who follows the DSM-IV like some kind of bible, get out of there, quick. I've had good friends get really messed up from allowing low-budget shrinks to try to treat them for depression, anxiety and other disorders. Never trust a therapist who obviously doesn't know what he's doing. You're better off buying mexican wild yam root by the bottle and doing it all on your own.
Just to stress how important it is to make sure you're getting decent care, let me tell you a little story. If you've been screwed like this before, you're going to love this. One of my husband's employees had to start taking her daughter to a new therapist. They had moved recently and didn't know the area very well, and they didn't have a whole lot of money. They ended up going to a relatively inexpensive professional somewhere in town. This turned out to be a very bad move. In fact, it was an exceptionally dangerous move because her daughter had been suffering from a potentially life-threatening form of anorexia nervosa. Well, what happened was that the quack took her OFF of a medication that had been helping her, and it nearly killed her.
You know what his premise for it was? His reasoning was that it had some risk for abuse. In his words, "Do you really want to give your daughter a drug that is used by drug addicts!?" He was afraid that this woman's daughter was going to start crushing up her meds and snorting them through a straw (this is actually pretty ridiculous because the young woman has otherwise behaved respectably). Well, as a result of this man's closed-minded ignorance, this girl may have died young if it had not been for the excellent healthcare provided at the hospital in town. He was right to be concerned about the chance for substance abuse, yes. What he didn't recall from his lessons, however, was that 1) anorexia nervosa can become lethal, and 2) taking a person off of that type of drug too suddenly can result in a life-threatening rebound, even in a healthy individual. He was a QUACK. She couldn't sue him for malpractice, though, because he was technically acting in accordance to acceptable and mainstream literature.
If you can't afford to see a therapist who has the good sense to ignore the DSM where it conflicts with real science, then keep patiently rolling your pennies until you can afford the care you need. Don't cut corners on your healthcare, particularly if the instutution you intend to entrust yourself to will be handling such an intimate and fragile thing as your mind. Your mind is not a toy.
