Love, Sex and Psychotherapy in a Post-Romantic Era

How do cultural changes such as the increasing lustful possibilities of our liquid modernity affect ‘romantic’ values as psychotherapists and counsellors - and, in turn, affect how they work through their clients’ relationships? Do they embody values from a previous era that are inappropriate for the era we are in now, which some term ‘post-romantic’? For example, do they really privilege monogamous relationships? There again, do those psychotherapists who advocate polygamy really want others to legitimize their own desire to have affairs? How wary should one be of accepting such prevailing theories as Freud’s nuclear family romance and his ‘ordinary unhappiness’? Is anyone value-free regarding romanticism/post-romanticism and should they be? Is ‘to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part’ still an ideal worth working towards or more an ideological imprisonment? This book seeks to explore recent research on how notions of romanticism and post-romanticism affect therapeutic practices.

is a significant new contribution to psychotherapy, and will be a great resource for prospective and current clients, trainee and professional therapists, academics, researchers, and advanced students of Psychology, Psychotherapy, Philosophy and Human Behaviour.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling.