This book is a selection of papers from the eleventh John Bowlby Memorial Conference. It covers the themes of sexuality and attachment, providing from a historical overview through intricate theoretical pathways to vivid descriptions to both analyst and analysand of a therapeutic relationship.

The papers featured in Attachment and Sexuality create a dense tapestry, each forming a separate narrative strand that elucidates different configurations of the relationship between attachment and sexuality. As a whole, the volume explores the areas of convergence and divergence, opposition, and integration between these two systems. It suggests that there is a bi-directional web of influences that weaves the attachment and sexual systems together in increasingly complex ways from infancy to adulthood. The volume’s unifying thread is the idea that the attachment system, and particularly the degree of felt security, or lack thereof in relation to early attachment figures, provides a paradigm of relatedness that forms a scaffold for the developmental unfolding of sexuality in all its manifestations. Such manifestations include infantile and adult, masturbatory and mutual, and normative and perverse. Also central to the papers is the idea that the development of secure attachment is predicated, in part, on the development of the capacity for mentalization, or the ability to envision and interpret the behavior of oneself and others in terms of intentional mental states, including desires, feelings, beliefs, and motivations. Topics discussed in the book will help to shape the direction and tenor of further dialogues in the arena of attachment and sexuality.

"The second book in the John Bowlby Memorial Conference Lecture Series. It explores our thinking about the developmental, relational and interpersonal aspects of the links between attachment and sexuality as they emerge in clinical practice.Contributors:Bernice Laschinger; Chris Purnell; Joanna Ryan; Joseph Schwartz; Kate White; Rachel Wingfield; and Judy Yellin."--Provided by publisher.

The second book in the John Bowlby Memorial Conference Lecture Series. It explores our thinking about the developmental, relational and interpersonal aspects of the links between attachment and sexuality as they emerge in clinical practice.Contributors: Bernice Laschinger; Chris Purnell; Joanna Ryan; Joseph Schwartz; Kate White; Rachel Wingfield; and Judy Yellin

Call it a remnant of our Victorian past, but sexual concerns lag behind other aspects of health, both in the training of physicians and therapists and in the way they impart this knowledge to clients. But as sexuality gains recognition as crucial to one’s quality of life, evidence-based methods of understanding and discussing sex are imperative—and not only in treating pathology. Sexual Medicine in Clinical Practice provides framework, rationale, and strategies for both approaching sexual problems and addressing patients’ questions about sexual health, behavior, and relationships. Analyzing sexuality along three dimensions—attachment, reproduction, and desire—this concise manual offers a biopsychosocial lifespan model readily translatable into clinical work. This “syndyastic” framework integrates attachment and relational theory to reinforce the bond between intimacy and connectedness, and models nonjudgmental approaches to disorders of sexual function, maturity, preference, and behavior. The authors’ salutogenic rather than pathogenic focus lets clients become major players in their own healing, and the therapist or doctor serve as expert and guide. Among the topics covered: The communicative function of sexuality. The spectrum of sexual disorders. Principles of diagnostics in sexual medicine. Disease-centered versus client-centered aspects of sexual therapy. Therapeutic approaches for sexual traumatization. New challenges, including preventing child sexual abuse and online sex crime. Plus case studies, interdisciplinary references, and ethical issues. A timely, perspective- and practice-altering volume, Sexual Medicine in Clinical Practice is essential reading for family and primary care physicians, family and sex therapists, health psychologists, and psychiatrists.

The second book in the John Bowlby Memorial Conference Lecture Series. It explores our thinking about the developmental, relational and interpersonal aspects of the links between attachment and sexuality as they emerge in clinical practice.