This workshop probes the intricacies of love and desire—how they relate and how they conflict.. Participants will learn how emotional intimacy can inhibit sexual desire and why “good intimacy” doesn’t necessarily make for “good sex.” Through case material and video vignettes, we’ll explore how our emotional history: “how we were loved” shapes our erotic blueprints and expresses itself in the physicality of sex: “how we make love”. We will show how to break through erotic impasses and help couples balance the dual needs for security and freedom. This model applies to couples and individuals from all sexual orientations.
BT10 Workshop 28 - The Double Flame: Reconciling Intimacy and Sexuality - Esther Perel, MA, LMFT
This workshop probes the intricacies of love and desire—how they relate and how they conflict. Participants will learn how emotional intimacy can inhibit sexual desire and why “good intimacy” doesn’t necessarily make for “good sex.” Through case material and video vignettes, we’ll explore how our emotional history: “how we were loved” shapes our erotic blueprints and expresses itself in the physicality of sex: “how we make love”. We will show how to break through erotic impasses and help couples balance the dual needs for security and freedom. This model applies to couples and individuals from all sexual orientations.
Couples who appear warm and friendly can be deceptively difficult. They fear intensity, anger and deep involvement. We will focus on principles for managing sessions, core competencies required in the therapist, and what it takes to support each partner's development to enable more intimacy and sexuality.
Therapists who perform marital and sex therapy often become “vanilla-ized” by conservative and moralistic values espoused by the psy- chotherapy industry. Through a series of permissive group inductions attendees will reconnect with their erotic self. They will also engage in future foreplay regarding potential erotic selves. By more fully experiencing the erotic self, therapists will be more effective in working with sexually diverse clients who desire consensual BDSM, kink, fetish, and multi-partner experiences.
This workshop examines the cultural pressures that shape domesticated sex and the puzzling inverse correlation between greater emotional intimacy and the loss of sexual desire. It will demonstrate how to help couples draw pleasure from the hidden, the suggestive and the uncanny while also respecting their needs for safety and stability. Using case examples, we will explore how to grant the body its profound capacities for communicating in its own language.