An Israeli Sex Therapist Considers a New View of Women's Sexual Problems

Abstract

By focusing on the inequalities that exist between men and women as a result of culture, ethnicity, religion, legislation, etc., the New View of Women's Sexual Problems brings to the forefront the social inequalities that may produce sexual dysfunction in women in Israel. In addition, the rights to sexual information, comprehensive sexual education and appropriate sexual health care have not been recognized in Israel. The field of sexology in Israel is also relatively young and underdeveloped. Therefore, the New View of Women's Sexual Problems' focus is extremely relevant for sexologists and sex therapists working in Israel.     

Forms in Motion: A Personal View of Object Relations

Seligman presents personal imagery and theoretical resonances about “internal object relations.” Listening to patients, he is often imagining presences in motion, in choreography, spatialization, and sometimes pictorialization of bodies experiencing and acting with people, places, things, and other environmental features. Emotions are typically engaged. He describes “shapey, blobby forms” that might organize into more specific images or narratives, which may be quite fantastical, quite realistic, or in varied blends of these and other modes. These experiences are linked to Freudian and Kleinian conceptions of phantasy and contemporary relational theories of implicit schemas, representations of relationships, and the like. Case illustrations are offered.     

From Benign Mirror to Demon Lover: An Object Relations View of Compulsion Versus Desire

This article addresses the terrifying power of the father as a dynamic force within the psyche of the female. Its particular focus is on how the psychodynamic form of father internalization within the female effects her creative process and her creative work. Two cases vignettes of female writers are used to illustrate the interaction of traumatizing parental behavior and the daughters incestuous desire on promoting compulsions and inhibitions in creative work. Writing blocks will be seen as a symptom of trauma and psychic conflict that has taken place in the oedipal and post oedipal years, as opposed to the creative compulsions that result from primal stage preoedipal trauma.Address correspondence to Susan Kavaler-Adler, Ph.D., ABPP, Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, 115 East 9th Street, 12P New York, NY 10003; e-mail: SUSKA674@aol.com.     

Sex and Sexuality: An Evolutionary View

In this article, I first offer a summary of Darwin’s main ideas, especially relating to sex, and explain how these have been elaborated by more recent evolutionary scholars. I then give an account of the historical divergence between psychoanalysis and classical Darwinian thought, and describe how the early psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein tried to counter this by addressing some biological themes in her work. Following a review of some contemporary attempts to bring psychoanalysis and evolutionary thought into alignment with each other, I make some suggestions regarding a view of sex and sexuality that would be sound in evolutionary terms while also being helpful in psychoanalytic ones.     

Disciplinary Relations/Sexual Relations: Feminist and Foucauldian Reflections on Professor–Student Sex

Drawing on Michel Foucault's writings as well as the writings of feminist scholars bell hooks and Jane Gallop, this paper examines faculty–student sexual relations and the discourses and policies that surround them. It argues that the dominant discourses on professor–student sex and the policies that follow from them misunderstand the form of power that is at work within pedagogical institutions, and it examines some of the consequences that result from this misunderstanding. In Foucault's terms, we tend to theorize faculty–student relations using a model of sovereign power in which people have or lack power and in which power operates in a static, stable, and exclusively top‐down manner. We should, however, recognize the ways in which individuals in pedagogical institutions are situated within disciplinary and thus dynamic, reciprocal, and complex networks of power, as well as the ways in which the pedagogical relation may be a technique of the self and not only of domination. If we reconsider these relations in terms of Foucault's accounts of discipline and technologies of the self, we can recognize that prohibitions on faculty—student sexual relations within institutions such as the university are productive rather than repressive of desire, and that such relations can be opportunities for development and not only for abuse. Moreover, this paper suggests that the dominant discourses on professor—student relations today contribute to a construction of professors as dangerous and students as vulnerable, which denies the agency of (mostly female) students and obscures the multiplicity of forms of sexual abuse that occur within the university context.     

Object Relations Theory and Technique Applied to Sex and Marital Therapy

This paper demonstrates integrating psychoanalysis and behavioral techniques in sexual and marital therapy. It particularly illustrates how Fairbairn's (1943) concept of the return of the repressed can help a couple reclaim lost unconscious parts of themselves, and extensive use of countertransference during sex and marital therapy.     

Agentic and Communal Personality Traits: Relations to Attitudes Toward Sex and Sexual Experiences

This study was designed to examine relations among agentic and communal personality traits, attitudes toward sex, and sexual experiences in a sample of 202 undergraduates. As predicted, acceptance of interpersonal violence, with particular reference to intimate and sexual relationships, was positively associated with unmitigated agency. Among male participants, willingness to engage in uncommitted sexual relations was positively associated with unmitigated agency and negatively associated with communion and unmitigated communion. Among female participants, agency was positively related to satisfaction with current sexual and romantic relationships. These results partially support Helgesons (1994) theoretical model that links unmitigated agency to relational conflict and instability and links communion to emotional bonding and commitment.     

Digging Deeper: An Object Relations Couple Therapy Update

Over the past two decades, neurobiology research has added clarity to the process of emotional and behavioral change. In turn, this has led to endorsement of interventions that appear to be most helpful in individual and couple therapy. In addition to research on emotional dysregulation, contemporary studies have focused on the construction of meaning and its relevance to interpersonal relationships. According to Lisa Barrett, Richard Lane, and others, the brain references concepts to rapidly arrive at the most probable conclusions. Encoded experience and memory fragments guide this process and are vital in understanding partners' emotional responses. These findings support an object relations perspective that emphasizes the importance of past relational experiences that inform the present. This is particularly relevant in work with couples, as each individual's beliefs, expectations, and capacity for intimacy are invariably tied to earlier relationships. Research findings on memory reconstruction provide a basis for interventions that can add to the existing treatment approach, as it is suggested that working in a specific way with emotionally based memories has the potential to modify and reduce their predictive power and ability to unleash beliefs and behaviors that work against intimacy. The therapist who is informed by emerging neuroscience research can better uncover and actively work with memories that may be compromising a couple's relationship.     

Sex and Punishment: An Examination of Sexual Consequences and the Sexual Double Standard in Teen Programming

A content analysis was conducted to examine sexual consequences on teen programming. The sample consisted of prime-time television dramas that featured characters between the ages of 12 and 22 years. Two major goals guided the study. First, the types of sexual consequences in teen programming were investigated. Results showed that emotional and social consequences far outnumbered physical consequences. Second, the portrayal of the sexual double standard was investigated. Negative consequences were more common in scenes in which female characters initiated sexual activities than in scenes in which male characters initiated sexual activities. Implications for future content analyses and media-effects research are discussed.     

Case Report: Object Relations Family Therapy as a Model for Genetic Counseling

Object relations family therapy (ORFT) is a psychoanalytically based approach for the treatment of couples and families which stresses the importance of past relationships. The therapist assumes a parentlike role and provides a holding environment in which clients can explore unconscious motivations. This paper will discuss the applicability of this method to genetic counseling. The case of a couple seen for recurrent trisomies will be presented and used as an example to discuss how ORFT might serve as a framework in a genetic counseling session.     

Projective identification: Pros and cons. An essay review of Samuel Slipp,the technique and practice of Object Relations Family Therapy

This paper is a critical appraisal of Samuel Slipp's book on Object Relations Family Therapy (ORFT), which uses the concept of projective identification as a central thesis in explaining interpersonal influence. Slipp's book is praised for its excellent review of the literature of object relations theory and the major schools of family therapy, classification of families according to complementary projections, and revealing case material. Interpersonal-Systemic (I-S) theory and methodology with its use of the concepts of empathy, interpersonal influences, search for intimacy, maintenance of self-esteem, selective inattention, and reflected appraisals is offered as an alternative view to projective identification.     

Object Relations Theory Revisited:

Object relations theory has been used effectively by private social work practitioners in both diagnosis and treatment applications. This article presents an overview of the important concepts in object relations theory and developmental theory, with an emphasis on synthesizing such concepts for direct use in clinical practice.