Sex, Mind And Emotion - 9781855753495

Recent decades have seen a decline in the emphasis on sexuality in psychoanalytic theory, while clinical psychology has become more involved in sexual health issues. However, sexuality remains at the core of human experience, and where there are psychological and psychotherapeutic treatments, there will be sexual issues to be addressed. Sex, Mind and Emotion is a collection of predominantly clinical papers that use a fusion of psychoanalytic, systemic and cognitive theories in conjunction with public service practice. Defining problematic sexual behavior is an issue fraught with difficulty, as acceptable behavior is something affected by social and cultural mores. The authors have defined problematic behavior in various ways, including behavior that has been deemed to be problematic by law, a biostatistical definition of normality and abnormality, and the admission of subjective distress by the patient.

The book is divided into three parts: developments in theory, client groups posing new challenges, and innovative therapeutic approaches. It deals with important and relevant topics such as the treatment of sex offenders; the compulsive use of Internet pornography; the psychosexual development of adolescents growing up with HIV; the psychodynamics of unsafe sex; refugees and sexuality; services for people with gender dysphoria; psychological treatment for survivors of rape and sexual assault; and loss of sexual interest. The central tenet is that sexual behavior cannot be divorced from the emotional context in which it occurs and therefore no chapter is about sex without also addressing "mind" and "emotion." Throughout the book, two common themes are the inextricable interrelatedness of biology and psychology, and the importance of a developmental perspective. The contributors also compare clinical evidence with theoretical models and refine both practice and theory accordingly. Clinical vignettes are used to illustrate theoretical points and while much of the work focuses on the individual, there are also two chapters that emphasize the importance of the relational context in which problems may occur.

Contributors: Naomi Adams, Winifred Bolton, Anne-Marie Doyle, Brigid Hekster, Janice Hiller, Diane Melvin, Bernard Ratigan, Simon Thomas, Deirdre Williams, Heather Wood, and Sarah Zetler.