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Sexual Attraction in Therapy presents new findings from multiple perspectives into the complex phenomenon of sexual attraction in therapy. Detailed clinical examples and strategies from expert contributors demonstrate how therapists can engage with sexual attraction, when it arises, in positive ways that facilitate client progress and ensure appropriate professional conduct.
* Challenges practitioners to think about sexual attraction as a normal dynamic developing through the unique intimacy of the therapy encounter
* Presents new findings from research to enrich understanding of the lived experience of therapists and how they confront, avoid, make use of the process of sexual attraction
* Provides clinical examples to highlight common challenges faced by practitioners, the strategies they use to overcome them and how they normalize the 'taboo' of sexual attraction to make positive use of it in therapy
* Makes an important contribution to current literature on professional practice, an area of increasing importance as more emphasis is placed on issues of ethics, ongoing supervision and appropriate professional conduct
* Expert contributors include Doris McIlwain, Michael Worrell, John Sommers-Flanagan and Martin Milton
About the author
Maria Luca is a Reader in Psychotherapy and Counselling Psychology, Senior Research Fellow, and Head of the Reflections Research Centre in the School of Psychotherapy and Counselling Psychology, Regent's University London, UK. She has extensive clinical experience as a psychotherapist in the NHS and runs a private practice in London. She is a UKCP accredited psychotherapist, a BACP senior accredited counselling supervisor, and editor of The Therapeutic Frame in the Clinical Context: Integrative Perspectives (2004).
Summary
Moving beyond psychoanalytic theories of transference and countertransference, this guide for practitioners and students explores the real-world phenomenon of sexual attraction in therapy across a wide range of modalities including CBT and ACT.
