Authored by Henry Strick van Linschoten AASECT (American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists). (2016, November). AASECT Position on sex addiction. Retrieved from https://www.aasect.org/position-sex-addiction American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-5 (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association. Anders, S. M. van. (2015). Beyond sexual orientation: Integrating gender/sex and diverse sexualities via sexual configurations theory. Arch. Sex. Behav., 44(5), 1177–1213. doi: 10.1007/s10508-015-0490-8 Balint, M. (1969). Trauma and object relationship. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 50(4), 429–435. Retrieved from http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=ijp.050.0429a Balzarini, R. N., Dobson, K., Chin, K., & Campbell, L. (2017). Does exposure to erotica reduce [...]

Authored by Henry Strick van Linschoten Following the outline presented in the section on Issues, you may want to do some deeper study, or on certain matters may like more details. Apart from the references offered at the end of the sections, here are some general sources that go into more detail than this module. A number of general academic level textbook-style sources Justin Lehmiller. The Psychology of Human Sexuality. Lehmiller (2018). Simon LeVay, Janice Baldwin and John Baldwin. Discovering Human Sexuality. 4th ed. LeVay, Baldwin and Baldwin (2018). Meg-John Barker and Christina Richards (Eds.). The Palgrave Handbook of the Psychology [...]

Authored by Henry Strick van Linschoten Human diversity is a reality - in psychotherapy, in sexuality, in the therapeutic relationship, and in relationships generally. Diversity is more often seen and defined too narrowly rather than too widely. Differences in genders, in ethnicity, in religion or spirituality, in class, in educational attainment, are more quickly identified. But these days there is a growing awareness of diversity in health, in personality, in able-bodiedness, in neurodiversity, in trauma and abuse background, in genes, in epigenetic, prenatal and perinatal history, in culture, in age... And last but not least, differences in sexuality, in orientation, in [...]

Authored by Henry Strick van Linschoten Ethics and morality are about right and wrong. Many ethical issues are controversial, perhaps especially in the field of sexuality. As counsellors we have a "Code of Ethics" (at least one!) to abide by - which will get less attention in this module, as it tends to be the most discussed, and gets a reasonable place in most of our basic training. Apart from up-to-date guidance from the ethics committees of our membership organization, there are a number of well-known books that give good guidance in this area, e.g. Bond and Mitchels (2014), Gabbard (2016), [...]

Authored by Henry Strick van Linschoten There are a number of controversies in the fields of sexuality and gender that may be relevant, or appear to be relevant, to psychotherapists and counsellors. Most of these have fairly clear resolutions - not that there are easy, single truths, or that there are not valid arguments on both sides. But in practice, key aspects of these controversies can at least be organised together, so that more clarity can be reached than in most mainstream public and media discussions. One general theme is that of psychotherapy and the law. There is no doubt that [...]

Authored by Henry Strick van Linschoten Sexuality is such a fundamental part of human life, that it can touch or impact on almost any aspect of psychotherapy. But in practice, the following list of issues may be good to keep in mind when watching the videos and reading the other sections of this guide, as they keep recurring, and are main reasons why extra attention to the field of sexuality and sexology makes us better and more effective counsellors and therapists. Listening for and recognising sexual and gender issues The most important contribution of the videos in this module and sections [...]

Authored by Henry Strick van Linschoten In the context of the complete module, this section will discuss the immediate and wider aspects of how trauma, abuse and PTSD can influence sexuality, sexual health and well-being, and give views about the relative importance, strength and weakness of associations often made, all with a view to what is useful for the psychotherapeutic practitioner in their work practice with clients. Abuse and trauma Abuse is a term that is used to emphasise the mistreatment, unfairness, improperness, or sometimes wrongness of actions inflicted by one or more people on other humans (or animals). Wikipedia manages [...]

Authored by Henry Strick van Linschoten Starting from the clear and simple proposition that crimes are not mental disorders, and that mental disorders are not crimes, this section mainly tries to cover the many misunderstandings that exist in the sphere of the overlap that exists between people convicted of crimes, people who have diagnosed "mental disorders" according to DSM and ICD, and the people with whom we work as counsellors and psychotherapists. And this with a partial, but not complete, eye on sexuality as the topic of this module. The problems of confusion, lack of clear knowledge and feelings of uncertainty [...]

Authored by Henry Strick van Linschoten Using words, labelling, classifying and diagnosing are essential human activities, as language and verbal expression are an important distinction for us as a species. Although diagnosis is sometimes criticised by psychotherapists from various perspectives, some form of it is needed for many activities, such as doing research, making health decisions, classifying people's issues statistically to lead to staffing and budgeting decisions. Also, under different headings of "formulation" or "assessment", in the early process before a person is settled down into seeing a counsellor, there is often an attempt to determine and verbalize what kind of [...]

Authored by Henry Strick van Linschoten “Sexuality is a central aspect of being human throughout life and encompasses sex, gender identities and roles, sexual orientation, eroticism, pleasure, intimacy and reproduction.” This is taken from the WHO (2006) working definitions, and the WHO in another part states the centrality of a concept of “sexual health”, which is very widely defined, and involves a focus on well-being, rather than being principally concerned with the absence of disease, defects, deficiencies, pathology and dysfunction. Unfortunately the WHO statements show their age by only talking about freedom from coercion, and not using the more helpful concept [...]