Sexual Medicine in Clinical Practice

Call it a remnant of our Victorian past, but sexual concerns lag behind other aspects of health, both in the training of physicians and therapists and in the way they impart this knowledge to clients. But as sexuality gains recognition as crucial to one's quality of life, evidence-based methods of understanding and discussing sex are imperative—and not only in treating pathology. Sexual Medicine in Clinical Practice provides framework, rationale, and strategies for both approaching sexual problems and addressing patients' questions about sexual health, behavior, and relationships. Analyzing sexuality along three dimensions—attachment, reproduction, and desire—this concise manual offers a biopsychosocial lifespan model readily translatable into clinical work. This “syndyastic” framework integrates attachment and relational theory to reinforce the bond between intimacy and connectedness, and models nonjudgmental approaches to disorders of sexual function, maturity, preference, and behavior. The authors' salutogenic rather than pathogenic focus lets clients become major players in their own healing, and the therapist or doctor serve as expert and guide. Among the topics covered: The communicative function of sexuality. The spectrum of sexual disorders. Principles of diagnostics in sexual medicine. Disease-centered versus client-centered aspects of sexual therapy. Therapeutic approaches for sexual traumatization. New challenges, including preventing child sexual abuse and online sex crime. Plus case studies, interdisciplinary references, and ethical issues. A timely, perspective- and practice-altering volume, Sexual Medicine in Clinical Practice is essential reading for family and primary care physicians, family and sex therapists, health psychologists, and psychiatrists.

Klaus M. Beier received his MD (1986) and PhD (1988) at the Free University of Berlin and subsequently worked in the Department of Sexology at the University of Kiel, Northern Germany (1988 – 1996). His main focus in research at that time was forensic sexology, in particular follow-up studies of previously expertly evaluated sexual offenders. Since 1996 he has been working at the Humboldt-University of Berlin as the director of the newly founded Institute of Sexology and Sexual Medicine. This institute is part of the University Hospital Charite, the biggest University Clinic in Europe. This Institute offers lectures and tutorials for undergraduate students of all disciplines such as medicine, psychology, social and cultural sciences, humanities etc. Prof. Beier is in charge of the outpatient clinic of the institute which covers the full range of sexual and gender identity disorders which he and his co-workers are dealing with on a daily basis. Since 1997 he has been responsible for the officially accredited post-graduate courses in sexual medicine, training colleagues from other specialized fields such as andrology, endocrinology, general medicine, gynecology (child and adolescent) psychiatry, psychosomatics, psychotherapy and urology as well as clinical psychology. His latest research focuses on the prevention of child sexual abuse. The goal is to encourage self-identified undetected pedophiles and hebephiles to seek professional help in order to avoid committing child sexual abuse or the use of child abusive images on the internet (www.dont-offend.org).

Kurt Loewit graduated in 1959 from the Medical School of the University of Innsbruck. 1967-69 he stayed as Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Population Council, Rockefeller University in New York. After his return to Europe, he started lecturing on Sexual Medicine and introduced the subject into the medical curriculum. Among other study trips, he attended two training seminars at the Masters & Johnson-Institute in St. Louis and broadened the therapeutic concept by focusing on the communicative dimension of sexuality. Appointed Univ. Professor in 1979 he retired in 1999 from heading the Department of Sexual Medicine at the University Clinic for Medical Psychology and Psychotherapy in Innsbruck. As from 1997 he is cooperating with Prof. K. M. Beier in developing the concept of Syndyastic Sexual Therapy and implementing postgraduate training programs in sexual medicine for MD’s and PH.D’s in Berlin and in Salzburg, Austria.