Sexual intimacy and aging: An integrative framework to promote intimacy resilience in couple therapy.

In our work at the Intimacies Project at The Ackerman Institute for the Family we became aware of a gap in attention about sexuality and aging in the couple and family therapy field. In this article, we provide an integrative framework to guide therapists on how to address problems of sexuality and aging in the therapy room. Starting from considerations about the social context of aging and the self of the therapist, we contend that when normative sexual challenges become entangled with stigma, misconceptions about sexuality, limiting gender narratives, vulnerabilities, and defensive postures, they often result in emotional and sexual shutdowns. Through a combination of the vulnerability cycle with an expansive definition of sexuality, we demonstrate how we deconstruct impasses, disentangle normative quandaries from reactive dynamics, and help couples transform their sexual narratives. We outline how we conduct individual sessions to obtain relational sexual histories, utilize Sensate Focus as a mindful touch exercise, and help partners expand their sexual menus beyond penetration and orgasms. We also describe relational skills that may need to be strengthened to help aging couples deal with the ebb and flow of intimacy, sustaining resilience over time.

What is queer about sex?: expanding sexual frames in theory and practice.

Psychotherapists often believe if couples improve their communication and emotional dynamics, good sex follows. In practice we often find otherwise and have many questions about how to proceed to work with sexuality issues more directly. This paper presents the many challenges working with sex including the following: the fluidity and multidimensionality of sex and gender, the incongruities and paradoxes in sexual behavior, thoughts, attractions, feelings, and sensations, and the powerful feelings, impasses, surprises, and confusion therapists often experience doing the work. In essence, what is queer about sex? Using the couple as client, expansive ways of thinking and working with sexuality are presented including the development of inclusive models of sex, gender, and sexual response, as well as new approaches to standard sex therapy techniques such as sexual history-taking, redefining sex, and sensate focus. Techniques are presented with an emphasis on the therapist's use of self as sexual change agent including integrating multiple theoretical perspectives (psychodynamic, systemic, and cognitive-behavioral), co-creating a safe treatment frame, and how to intervene within the cognitive, affective, behavioral, somatic, and discursive realms.

Introduction.

ABSTRACT This volume presents a collection of psychoanalytically influenced authors writing about lesbian concerns. Profound changes have occurred within psychoanalysis due to the efforts of lesbian, gay, and bisexual scholars and the evolution of psychoanalytic theory away from classical models. The writers in this volume represent a second generation of scholars who have more latitude in using psychoanalysis to study sexual orientation and gender. The article summarizes the major changes in this field and outlines areas where further improvements in psychoanalysis can occur.

Lesbian psychoanalytic foremothers making waves.

ABSTRACT The progress lesbians have made within psychoanalysis is in its infancy since the first wave of gay/lesbian affirmative literature be-Suzanne Iasenza, PhD, is Associate Professor of Counseling at John Jay CollegeCity University of New York. She is on the faculties of the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy and the Institute for Human Identity. She maintains a private practice in psychotherapy and sex therapy in New York City. gan to surface in the early 1990s. The author stresses the need to document the history of the development of this long overdue movement. Three lesbian psychoanalytic foremothers are interviewed who offer glimpses into the psychoanalytic community from the early 1970s to the present giving us a deeper understanding of courageous acts that helped create gay and lesbian affirmative space within psychoanalysis.

Beyond "lesbian bed death".

Abstract Myths about lesbian sexuality continue to exist but none have received such widespread discussion as "lesbian bed death", a myth that has become a clinical entity even though it lacks definitional clarity and empirical validity. Its users, often relying on gender socialization theory, overgeneralize and essentialize lesbian women's sexual experiences, obscuring the diversity of lesbian sexual experience. This paper critiques the use of the term "lesbian bed death" and provides examples from sex research and lesbian literature of the panoply of lesbian passions and play.