Read more
Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality bridges the gap between depth psychology and modern sex therapy, offering a fresh, integrative approach to understanding sexual struggles.
Rather than treating symptoms like low desire, intimacy challenges, or compulsive behaviors as dysfunctions to fix, this book reveals how they often carry emotional meaning linked to trauma, attachment, and unspoken conflict. Drawing on compelling clinical stories and contemporary theory, Juliane Maxwald helps clinicians decode the unconscious narratives behind sexual concerns. Chapters explore topics such as desire discrepancy, pornography, consensual non-monogamy, erectile unpredictability, and narcissism, demonstrating how the thoughtful integration of technique and depth-oriented insight can foster real change. Grounded, accessible, and clinically rich, this book invites therapists to listen to sexuality not just as behavior, but as a window into emotional life - and as a story the psyche tells through the body.
This is essential reading for psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and sex therapists seeking to deepen their work with issues related to sex, intimacy, and relational life.
List of contents
Introduction: My Journey - From the Couch to the Consulting Room: How Psychoanalysis and Sex Therapy Came Together 1 From Silence to Discourse: Addressing Sexuality in the Counseling Room 2 Listening to What We Feel: Countertransference as Compass 3 The Erotic Mirror: Narcissism, Trauma, and the Sexual Self 4 Power At Play: BDSM, Relational Dynamics, and Therapeutic Healing 5 Sexual Healing: Masturbation, Trauma, and the Body's Wisdom 6 Is Porn to Blame? Rethinking Pornography in Sex Therapy 7 Binging on Sex: Transforming Compulsive Sexual Behavior 8 More Than the Agreement: Love, Loss, and Boundaries in Consensual Non-Monogamy 9 Between Knowing and Not Knowing: A Story of Sexual Fluidity 10 The Unconscious as Orgasm: Sex and the Journey into the Unknown 11 Desire Discrepancy: When Arousal and Attachment Collide Conclusion Addendum: Sometimes a Cigar Is Just a Cigar - The Case for Simple Solutions
About the author
Juliane Maxwald, MA, LP, CST, is a psychoanalyst and certified sex therapist in New York specializing in sexuality, trauma, and relational dynamics. She teaches and supervises nationally across psychoanalytic and sex therapy settings.
