In his 20s he had his penis and scrotum removed and a false vagina fashioned from the penile skin and inserted into his body, and he became Helen. He married illegally and was later in another relationship that fell apart when his male partner discovered Helen had been born male. Then he had a relationship with a woman, who encouraged him to become a man again.

"I knew with my whole being that was what I wanted to do," Mr Finch, 36, of Melbourne, says. About five years ago, he began taking male hormones, something he says was "a roller-coaster ride emotionally". He was angry at himself for having been so gullible that he was sucked into the fantasy that becoming a woman would solve his identity crisis.

Like about 10 per cent of people in Australia who have the operation (about 80 a year in Sydney, Melbourne and on the Gold Coast), he was unhappy with the result. Australian Transgender Support Association president Gina Mather said there were between 48,000 and 50,000 transsexuals, most of them male to female, in Australia. Not all had had surgery. Mr Finch said: "Anatomically, I was never a woman. (The surgery) was creating a battleground within my own body. It's just rearranging flesh, but the tissue that's used is still male tissue. I was never able to have any orgasm or sexual pleasure. Everything was fake about it, from top to toe."

His psychiatrist, Byron Rigby, said: "In the absence of much more adequate counselling than I understand he received, the test showed that he, even in the presence of oestrogen treatment, was well on the masculine side of average." Just how did Mr Finch end up in the middle of this fiasco?

Dr Rigby said it began with the lack of a positive father figure. "(Alan) couldn't learn from his father how to be anything that he wanted to be." When he was 19, Mr Finch migrated to Australia with his mother and sister. It was a chance to begin a new life as a woman. "My focus was to be the best-looking woman I could be. I got a job, I was getting attention from men. I felt powerful."

The final hurdle before the surgery that would effectively castrate him was the psychiatric test. First time around, he failed. Then he learned how to fudge the test and answer the questions to put him into the female zone. The operation got the go-ahead.

Dr Rigby wants to know how that happened. "I think it warrants a full investigation at governmental level." Mr Finch is looking at the possibility of genital reconstruction to restore his penis. His story screens on Australian Story, ABC TV, 8pm tomorrow.