Sex, Attachment and Couple Psychotherapy

Christopher Clulow, PhD, is a Senior Fellow of the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, London, where he works as a visiting lecturer and researcher. He has published extensively on marriage, partnerships, parenthood and couple psychotherapy, most recently from an attachment perspective. He has a long history of contributing to thinking about the processes involved in ending relationships, and his most recent work has involved heading up a project identifying competences for treating depression through couple therapy under the Department of Health's Improving Access to Psychological Therapies initiative. He has also recently consulted to and evaluated interventions provided by a mental health agency to reduce depression in parents of young children. He is a founding member and past Deputy Chair of the British Society of Couple Psychotherapists and Counsellors and a member of the editorial board for the journal 'Couple and Family Psychoanalysis'.

'What, from a psychoanalytic point of view, constitute the 'facts of life'? What are the stories that our professional mentors tell us about the psychological equivalents of the 'birds and the bees'? How useful are these stories, and in what ways do they help those of us who work with couples understand and change the sexual difficulties that they present us with? Do these stories, indeed, have anything to say about sex, or might they, like the inventions of embarrassed parents, deflect our attention away from what we really need to know in relating to the sexual lives of our patients?Threading through the chapters of this book is a strong sense of the interconnection between sexual behaviour and patterns of attachment in couple relationships. Each provides a window on the other, and, like a double helix, they snake an intertwined pathway together over the life course. Different psychoanalytic conceptual narratives may give one spiral prominence over the other, and they may differ in the images they use in telling this central story of life, but there is an emerging relatedness and coherence between the perspectives that they offer.'- Christopher Clulow, from the IntroductionThe ContentsForeword - Peter FonagyThe Facts Of Life: An Introduction - Christopher ClulowDoes Psychoanalysis Need Sexology? - Brett KahrWhat Do We Mean By 'Sex'? - Warren ColmanLively And Deathly Intercourse - Francis GrierSeparated Attachments And Sexual Aliveness - Susie OrbachDynamics And Disorders Of Sexual Desire - Christopher Clulow & Maureen Boerma Sexual Dread And Therapist Desire - Susanna AbseLoss Of Desire And Therapist Dread - Sandy Rix & Avi ShmueliLoss Of Desire: A Psychosexual Case Study - Laura Green & Jane SeymourPower Versus Love In Sadomasochistic Couple Relationships - David HewisonFrom Fear Of Intimacy To Perversion - Mary Morgan & Judith FreedmanPerversion As Protection - Joanna RosenthallIntimacy And Sexuality In Later Life - Andrew Balfour

• Foreword -- The facts of life: an introduction -- Psychoanalysis and sexpertise -- What do we mean by “sex”? -- Lively and deathly intercourse -- Separated attachments and sexual aliveness -- Dynamics and disorders of sexual desire -- Sexual dread and the therapist’s desire -- Loss of desire and therapist dread -- Loss of desire: a psycho-sexual case study -- Power vs. love in sadomasochistic couple relationships -- From fear of intimacy to perversion -- Perversion as protection -- Intimacy and sexuality in later life