We've gathered Psychotherapy Networkers most popular posts and arranged them here by topic.
Couples Therapy in the Age of Viagra
Effective Therapy for When Erectile Dysfunction Strikes
Adolescent and young-adult men learn that erections are easy, automatic, and most important, autonomous. The Viagra media blitz both feeds and amplifies this male performance standard. Indeed, for men, the largest factor causing inhibited sexual desire is fear of erectile failure. But by a certain age, men need to learn what most women already know: good, satisfying, pleasurable sex, particularly in midlife and beyond, is more a matter of intimate teamwork than of physical hydraulics.
The Chemistry Behind Couples Therapy
Pat Love Explains the Science of Effective Sex Therapy
Our culture speaks of "falling" in love. Other societies have compared infatuation to divine revelation, and to psychosis. We often say, in jest, that this experience of hurricane-force passion is "like a drug." But that oft-quipped analogy may turn out to be no joke. Some scientists now believe that the frenzied euphoria of romantic love may well be a bona fide, altered state of consciousness, primarily brought on by the action of phenylethylamine (PEA), a naturally occurring, amphetamine-like neurotransmitter. And if our desire problems are at least partly innate, then maybe we don't need to feel quite so ashamed and despairing about the muddle we're in.
Should Depression Be Treated as a Chronic Condition?
Rethinking How We Deal with Depression
I’ve begun to put aside my idealized view that unless people overcome their difficulties once and for all, therapy is somehow a failure. More and more, that perspective seems simplistic and disconnected from the realities of what psychotherapy, no matter how skillful the clinician may be, can actually provide. So what if we start to think differently about this? What if we view anxiety and depression—especially generalized anxiety and dysphoric states of mild and moderate depressions—not as disorders that will be cured, but as chronic, relapsing, remitting disorders?
The Gottman Method: Couples Therapy Under the Microscope
John Gottman Blends Couples Counseling with Science
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, mathematician-turned-psychologist John Gottman performed experiments in which he videotaped ordinary couples in their most ordinary moments---chatting, kissing, and watching TV. But he also recorded how much they brought up painful subjects, how they responded to each other's bids for attention, and expressed emotion. Using complex computer models, he found that he could predict divorce with 91-percent accuracy, simply by analyzing seven variables in a couple's behavior during a five-minute disagreement. What he discovered made him famous, and eventually became the basis of Gottman Method Couples Therapy.
Sex Therapy for Building Intimacy
A Therapeutic Approach to Common Sexual Problems
Today, sex therapy consists mainly of counseling and “homework” in which new experiences are tried and new skills practiced. If clients are too tense or reluctant to try something new, systems approaches, couples therapy, prescription drugs and psychodynamic therapy may be tried as well. Once anxiety is lowered, sex therapy often proceeds successfully, especially in treating the following common problems outlined here.
Does Couples Therapy Work? When Therapists Avoid These Mistakes, It Does.
Therapy Tools for the Novice Marriage Counselor
Couples sessions can be scenes of rapid escalation uncommon in individual therapy, and even in family therapy. Lose control over the process for 15 seconds and you can have a couple fighting with each other to the point where the argument dominates the rest of the session, each partner wondering why they're paying you to watch them mix it up.As in any sport or art form, there are beginners' mistakes. Here are a few of them.
Pathways to Sexual Intimacy
Revealing Our Many Selves in the Bedroom
When people listen deeply inside, they encounter a host of feelings, fantasies, thoughts, impulses, and sensations that comprise that background noise of our everyday experience of being in the world. When they remain focused on and ask questions of one of those inner experiences, they find that it's more than merely a transient thought or emotion. Within each of us is a complex family of subpersonalities, which is why we can have so many contradictory and confusing needs simultaneously, especially around sex.
