At just the moment when many people are ready to throw Freud on to the ash-heap of intellectual history, Sex on the Couch rescues from Freud's theories a fascinating series of reflections on the nature of sexuality and gender. Richard Boothby presents here a fresh and engaging view of Freud. Sex on the Couch offers new insights into our concepts of masculinity and femininity, placing them in relation to Freud's theory of the Life and Death drives. Richard Boothby also engages feminist critiques of Freud, putting forward new and specific responses to questions that have shaped contemporary understanding of feminism and psychoanalysis. Boothby's Freud, far from being pass, is in possession of insights that enrich our understanding of modernity and its distinctive character. In a refreshingly readable style, Richard Boothby writes here not only for the scholarly reader but for the student and lay reader curious about Freud's theories and their use in contemporary world.

Does any love story ever truly end with "happily ever after"? Love: Sometimes exciting. Always complicated. Never easy. Some relationships last a lifetime-others last from dusk to dawn. ________________________________________________ From Clinical Sexologist, Dr. Arlene Krieger comes a collection of sexy short stories for adults that explore love-the most thrilling and complicated quest in the world. Written with compassion and humor, Sex from the Couch explores the irrational, passionate, and occasionally bizarre nature of love. Krieger's stories will make you laugh, cry, and gasp-sometimes with subverted expectations, other times in uncomfortable recognition of the pitfalls of adult relationships. In this anthology of thirteen short stories, twenty-six characters maneuver through life and love while gaining insight into themselves and each other. Encountering the often tragic, sometimes romantic aspects of what really happens behind closed doors, they seek answers to their most pressing questions: Does happily-ever-after actually exist? Why do some relationships last while some relationships crash? Her stories balancing between a relationship guide, splashes of erotica and psychological romance, Krieger's expertise in sexology lends a credible and unique voice to this tour de force of playfulness, romance, and surprising emotional intimacy. Sex from the Couch is a carefully crafted collection of stories about love and life inspired by clinical sexologist Dr. Arlene Krieger's observations on the birth and death of relationships-and all the messiness and joy that happen in between. Reflecting the sometimes pointless, always hopeful efforts humans make in the name of love, Krieger's thirteen stories deftly explore the tragic, romantic, and sexy realms of what really happens behind closed doors as well as our desire to believe in love, the disenchantment and pain of divorce, the appeal of treacherous encounters, and what it means to be in a relationship with another person. Each engaging story offers insights and hints about how to better navigate the journey of love. Sex from the Couch is a reminder that love need not be perfect to be perfectly exciting, irrational, passionate, inspirational, and complicate ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dr. Arlene Krieger has a PhD in clinical sexology and human sexuality. In her 20 year span of career, she has worked with over three thousand couples and individuals professionally in her private practice. She is triple-boarded as a licensed marriage and family therapist, mental health counselor and CST, Clinical Sexologist with an extensive background in working with adolescents, individuals, couples, and families, specializing in issues of relationship, marital issues, dating and divorce, intimacy, and sexuality. Dr. Krieger is the mother of three grown and accomplished young adults. She resides with her husband and five dogs, overlooking a lake in Persimmon Hollow.

WHAT MEN WANT. WHAT MEN FEEL. WHAT WOMEN NEED TO KNOW. When Dr. Brandy Engler opened her sex therapy practice for women in Manhattan, she got a big surprise. Most of the calls were from men. They wanted to talk about womanizing, porn addiction, impotence, prostitutes—and most of all, love. Her patients were everyday guys from all walks of life. Among them were David, the Wall Street hotshot and compulsive womanizer; Charles, an introvert who kept pushing away the fiancée he thought was too beautiful for him; Paul, the self-made man who visited massage parlors despite his sexy wife; and the men’s group whose stark revelations about male anger and their search for the right woman will open your eyes. In The Men on My Couch, Dr. Engler allows readers inside those private sessions to witness her exciting and evocative encounters with what men desire and fear. Dr. Engler tells her own story, too. At first her patients’ revelations are painful and disconcerting, especially against the backdrop of her own difficult love affair. Yet Dr. Engler lets readers experience how she evolves both professionally and personally, from chagrin to compassion, and reconciles her idealized notions of love and sex with the unexpected and raw truths she hears in the office. The Men on My Couch is unlike books you’ve read before. There are no tired facile conclusions or pejorative generalizations. Here are fresh insights into modern sexual maladies, gleaned from real people having real struggles and experiencing real epiphanies—in the real world. This book will change how both women and men think about love, sex, and desire.

From the bestselling author of Love's Executioner and When Nietzsche Wept comes a provocative exploration of the unusual relationships three therapists form with their patients. Seymour is a therapist of the old school who blurs the boundary of sexual propriety with one of his clients. Marshal, who is haunted by his own obsessive-compulsive behaviors, is troubled by the role money plays in his dealings with his patients. Finally, there is Ernest Lash. Driven by his sincere desire to help and his faith in psychoanalysis, he invents a radically new approach to therapy -- a totally open and honest relationship with a patient that threatens to have devastating results. Exposing the many lies that are told on and off the psychoanalyst's couch, Lying on the Couch gives readers a tantalizing, almost illicit, glimpse at what their therapists might really be thinking during their sessions. Fascinating, engrossing and relentlessly intelligent, it ultimately moves readers with a denouement of surprising humanity and redemptive faith.

Winner of the 2021 AASECT Book Award! Winner of the SSTAR Professional Book Award 2021! Winner of the SASH Media Award 2022! The Leather Couch provides a comprehensive overview of the BDSM and kink community and guides clinicians on how to meet the unique relational and mental health needs of its members. The text offers a 101-style introduction to BDSM before delving into topics ranging from intersectionality within the kink community, to conducting a kink-affirming risk assessment and how to discern between domestic violence and consensual power-exchange. The author explores differential diagnoses and clinical concerns that are relevant to health care providers, including social workers and therapists as well as primary care physicians and sex educators. Interwoven throughout with real-world case studies, each chapter presents practical suggestions, tools, and handouts the reader can use to inform their practice and serve clients in ways that meet the needs of each individual, couple, or partnership. Written in a conversational, accessible style for clinicians and members of the BDSM community alike, The Leather Couch is the go-to resource for any mental health professional or educator looking to transform their practice from kink aware to kink affirming.

Using Jacques Lacan's work as a key, Boothby reassesses Freud's most ambitious-and misunderstood-attempt at a general theory of mental functioning: metapsychology

In his 1889 novella The Kreutzer Sonata Lev Tolstoy declared war on human sexuality. Having fathered thirteen children by his wife and at least two children by peasant women, the great Russian writer now has the arrogance to suggest that people should stop having children. Psychoanalysis of Tolstoy's diaries and other private materials reveals that Tolstoy's anti-sex position was grounded in a sadistic attitude towards women (including his wife Sonia) and a punishing, masochistic attitude towards himself. These feelings, in turn, were related to the trauma of maternal loss in Tolstoy's early childhood.