Sex in Psychotherapy ─ Sexuality, Passion, Love, and Desire in the Therapeutic Encounter

Sex in Psychotherapy takes a psychodynamic approach to understanding recent technological and theoretical shifts in the field of psychotherapy. Lawrence Hedges provides an expert overview and analysis of a wide variety of new perspectives on sex, sexuality, gender, and identity; new theories about sex’s role in therapy; and new discoveries about the human brain and how it works. Therapists will value Hedges’s unique insights into the role of sexuality in therapy, which are grounded in the author’s studies of neurology, the history of sexuality, transference, resistance, and countertransference. Clinicians will also appreciate his provocative analyses of influential perspectives on sex, gender, and identity, and his lucid, concrete advice on the practice of therapeutic listening.

Lawrence E. Hedges, Ph.D. Psy.D., ABPP, is a psychologist-psychoanalyst specializing in psychoanalysis and long-term intensive psychotherapy, as well as the advanced training of psychotherapists. He holds teaching and supervising appointments at the Newport Psychoanalytic Institute, the California Graduate Institute, and the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine. He is author of numerous books and papers, including Listening Perspectives in Psychotherapy, Interpreting the Countertransference, Terrifying Transferences: Aftershocks of Childhood Trauma, and Facing the Challenge of Liability in Psychotherapy: Practicing Defensively. He is director of the Listening Perspectives Study Center and holds Diplomas from the American Board of Professional Psychology and the American Board of Forensic Examiners.

Introduction: “Boy Meets Girl”: A Just-so Story about Sexuality. Part I: Perspectives for Considering Sex, Sexuality, Gender, and Gender Identity. The Natural/Religious/Biological Perspective. The Infant-Caregiver/Erotic Interaction Perspective. The Personal Identity Perspective. The Perspective of Dissociation, Otherness, and Multiple Selves. The Postmodern/Social Constructionist Perspective. The Race/Ethnicity/Sexuality Perspective. The Perspective of Mimetics. The Perspective of Trauma and Transgenerational Ghosts. The Intersubjective Perspective. The Relational/Thirdness Perspective. Part II: Published Accounts of Sex in Psychotherapy. Some Relational Countertransference Issues. Developmental Listening. Listening Perspective I—The Personality in Organization: The Search for Relatedness. Listening Perspective II—Symbiosis and Separation: Mutually-dependent Relatedness. Listening Perspective III—The Emergent Self: Unilaterally Dependent Relatedness. Listening Perspective IV—Self and Other Constancy: Independent Relatedness. Part III: Three Extended Case Studies Illustrating Sex and Sexuality in the Transference, Resistance, and Countertransference of Psychotherapy. Dora: Eros in the Transference. Ted: Eros in the Resistance. Charles: Eros in the Countertransference. References.