CC13 Dialogue 01 – Sex Therapy – Lonnie Barbach and Marty Klein
Educational Objectives:
Given a topic, describe the differing approaches to psychotherapy, and identify the strength and weaknesses of each approach.
What do most couples really want from sex? It isn’t endless orgasms, or sex around the clock. Most people want the same old things: connection, pleasure, excitement, mystery, validation. And magic. When the prospect of getting these is slim, satisfaction declines, and desire falls. This is not a “dysfunction;” improving genital “function” is not the answer. The key, instead, often lies in addressing power struggles and control issues; the existential challenges of adulthood; and the need for a new vocabulary. We will discuss how to move couples from perfunctory, infrequent sex to a more vibrant and intriguing experience. We’ll also look at what therapists need internally to help couples discuss sex.
Price:
$29.00Base Price - $59.00 Sale is $29.00price reduced from Base Price - $59.00
Successful brief psychotherapeutic work with gay men includes the use of clinical hypnoses as well as an accepting compassionate stance of the psychotherapist. Ego-state work and positive self-representations create healing from years of internalized shame. Specific psychosocial issues for gay men, core issues common in the gay male community, customized hypnoses scripts, and effective short-term treatment strategies will be discussed.
Based on Perel’s Mating in Captivity, this bold take on intimacy and sex grapples with the obstacles and anxieties that arise when our quest for secure love conflicts with our pursuit of passion. We will tackle eroticism as a quality of aliveness and vitality in relationships extending far beyond mere sexuality and consider how the need for secure attachment and closeness can co-exist with the quest for individuality and freedom.
Price:
$29.00Base Price - $59.00 Sale is $29.00price reduced from Base Price - $59.00
Sexual infidelity often triggers a crisis that threatens the entire foundation of trust and connection in a couple. In this workshop, we’ll discuss the complexities of marriage, sex, intimacy, and monogamy in couples from a multicultural, nonjudgmental perspective. We’ll explore the motivations behind affairs and their possible meanings in different relationships, both heterosexual and gay. We’ll examine the benefits and costs of truth-telling and transparency, how couples can rebuild trust and intimacy, and why affairs can actually stabilize a marriage. With an eye on the existential, clinical and ethical aspects involved, we will focus on how our own assumptions, values, and personal experiences can influence our therapeutic work and elude the needs of the couple.
In this workshop, we will look at fantasy as an ingenious way our creative mind overcomes all sorts of relational and intra psychic conflicts around desire and intimacy. Therapists can help clients develop a view of fantasy as a narrative that creates a safe space to experience the pleasure that can invigorate their loving relation-ships. They will decipher the meaning of sexual fantasies, approaching them more as dreams or complex symbolic structures than as literal narratives of secret intentions.
Price:
$29.00Base Price - $59.00 Sale is $29.00price reduced from Base Price - $59.00
Infertility is devastating. Few have coping skills adequate enough to manage the intense physical and emotional demands of the experience, which can drag on without resolution for a long time. A didactic introduction will sensitize registrants to the gestalt of infertility. Effective treatment options with emphasis on letting-go techniques will be shared didactically and experientially.
How do we raise sexual issues? How should we respond when the couple does? Why doesn’t THIS couple enjoy sex, or have sex? Are aging or health issues complicating sexual problems? What’s the ONE cross-cultural issue that matters regarding sexuality? And what’s really a sexual issue—versus an issue of power, grief, resentment, or fear of rejection/abandonment? This PRACTICAL workshop will give you skills you can use on Monday morning.
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 therapy is often complicated and delicate when one partner has suffered childhood sexual abuse. The needs of both partners must be honored though one partner’s dream may be the other partner’s nightmare. This workshop describes the details of applying Gottman Method Couples Therapy to a case involving one partner’s history of severe sexual abuse.