Transforming Sexual Narratives offers readers the opportunity to address complex sexual problems through Narrative Relational Sex Therapy (NRST), an original approach that Suzanne Iasenza has developed during twenty-five years of clinical practice. This method presents a deeper, richer way of thinking about sexual challenges that has enabled clients to successfully rewrite their mistaken narratives to reclaim pleasure, intimacy, and satisfaction in their erotic lives. Drawing on the strengths of three very different therapeutic traditions - psychoanalytic, couple and family systems, and sex therapy - it delivers a fresh and dynamic way of understanding the complex interrelationship between personal, social, cultural, and familial sexual narratives. Chapters include conversations with diverse couples and individuals from all kinds of backgrounds and cultures, who exist in every kind of body, and in each case show how unconscious and harmful narratives can be transformed into healthy and pleasurable sex lives. This essential guide will help therapists to identify their client's secret sexual stories and enable them to rewrite their inner narratives and relationship with sexuality for the better. Sex therapists will be able to integrate a relational perspective into behavioral treatment, individual and couple therapists will be able to weave sexuality into general psychotherapy, and psychoanalysts will be able to use the sexual history to identify early dynamics that affect adult intimacy.

Transforming Sexual Narratives offers readers the opportunity to address complex sexual problems through Narrative Relational Sex Therapy (NRST), an original approach that Suzanne Iasenza has developed during twenty-five years of clinical practice. This method presents a deeper, richer way of thinking about sexual challenges that has enabled clients to successfully rewrite their mistaken narratives to reclaim pleasure, intimacy, and satisfaction in their erotic lives. Drawing on the strengths of three very different therapeutic traditions - psychoanalytic, couple and family systems, and sex therapy - it delivers a fresh and dynamic way of understanding the complex interrelationship between personal, social, cultural, and familial sexual narratives. Chapters include conversations with diverse couples and individuals from all kinds of backgrounds and cultures, who exist in every kind of body, and in each case show how unconscious and harmful narratives can be transformed into healthy and pleasurable sex lives. This essential guide will help therapists to identify their client's secret sexual stories and enable them to rewrite their inner narratives and relationship with sexuality for the better. Sex therapists will be able to integrate a relational perspective into behavioral treatment, individual and couple therapists will be able to weave sexuality into general psychotherapy, and psychoanalysts will be able to use the sexual history to identify early dynamics that affect adult intimacy.

Get a feminist perspective on important changes in psychoanalysis! Lesbians, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis: The Second Wave examines recent changes in psychoanalysis that have opened the door for new perspectives on same-sex desire. Authors from a variety of disciplines and theoretical orientations combine feminism with psychoanalytic and postmodern theories to celebrate diversity in gender and sexual experience. This collection of lesbian-affirmative writings addresses transference and countertransference, gender subjectivities, privilege and racism, therapist homophobia, and violence in lesbian relationships. In the past decade, psychoanalysis has undergone changes in clinical theory that have led to views on human sexuality that are less focused on what is normal and therapy practices that resist attempts to fit individuals into prescribed developmental models. Lesbians, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis presents a variety of backgrounds (psychiatry, psychology, and social work), analytic training (formal institute training, study groups, supervision), and theoretical perspectives (self-psychology, object relations, relational psychoanalysis, feminist theory, queer theory, postmodernism, Lacanian theory) unified by the healing power of psychoanalytically informed theory and practice. The book is divided into three sectionsCommunity: Personal and Political, Ongoing Clinical Issues, and New Thinking on Sexuality and Gender, addressing lesbian tomboy development, the queering of relational psychoanalysis, how attachment theory and intersubjectivity can contribute to newer gender theory, and including: interviews with lesbian psychoanalytic foremothers Joanne Spina, Lee Crespi, and Judy Levitz Dr. Darla Bjork's account of her journey to becoming an openly lesbian therapist contrasting views on transference and countertransference from gay and lesbian therapists and much more! Lesbians, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis: The Second Wave is an essential practical resource for clinicians and a vital classroom tool for academics working in psychology, social work, psychoanalysis, gender and women's studies, queer studies, and lesbian and gay studies.

Psychoanalytic theories of lesbian development epitomize the difficulty in liberating psychoanalysis from the past. Psychoanalytic theory has traditionally adopted a clear position that a lesbian orientation represented some form of psychological abnormality. Thankfully -- but only very recently -- some influential feminist leaders have begun to rethink issues of gender and sexual orientation, removing heterosexuality from its privileged position as normal.

In "Lesbians and Psychoanalysis, " Judith M. Glassgold and Suzanne Iasenza bring together twenty-six of these pioneers in the field of lesbian psychoanalytic theory. Through insightful chapters based on years of clinical experience, each author helps to redefine psychoanalytic theory by reinventing its foundations from an affirmative perspective so that it better represents all peoples.

"Lesbians and Psychoanalysis" addresses several topics of emerging concern including multicultural diversity, self-disclosure, homophobia, transference/countertransference issues, bisexuality, and the changing nature of lesbian sexuality. In addition, the authors examine the influence of stigma on human development. In three sections -- Past, Present, and Future -- the authors in turn critique past theory, discuss current issues in therapy, and describe new directions in theory and practice. This is a book that is sure to appeal not only to members of the psychoanalytic community but also to all those who are interested in gay and lesbian studies, feminism, and psychology.