Anatomy of Intimacy Program 2010
Saturday, November 13
Dating, Mating & Sex in the 21st Century:
From Teens to Baby Boomers
Pepper Schwartz, Ph.D.
This presentation provides an overall look at the 21st century American sexual and romantic landscape from young adulthood to the aging Baby Boomers. Internationally renowned sociologist Pepper Schwartz summarizes relevant research data on young adults, discussing the complexities of casual sex and intimacy in modern relationships. She further explores online dating, from her role as key consultant to PerfectMatch.com, sharing the good news and bad news about it, including how it may be changing American romance, marriage and fidelity. She will also discuss baby boomers entering late middle age and beyond, looking at their sexual patterns through the lens of the 2009 AARP national study.
Sex & Attachment: An EFT Approach to Treatment
Susan Johnson, Ed.D.
Dr. Johnson, the developer of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT), describes sexual functioning in the context of love as an attachment bond. She discusses research on sexuality and attachment as the emotional connection which defines the relationship in bed as well as out. Dr. Johnson posits that in healthy sex, there is an integration of attachment, sex and caregiving, with emotional presence and trust as significant aphrodisiacs. Sex as intimate play is at its best when there is secure attachment that provides a safe haven where excitement plus comfort, surrenders to sensation. Finally, Dr. Johnson outlines an attachment view of sexuality and the ways in which an EFT therapist directly addresses sexual issues with clinical videotape examples.
Finding the Chemistry:
Creating Vital Sexual Styles in Long-Term Relationships
Barry McCarthy, Ph.D.
The most common problems facing American couples—of all age groups, straight or gay, married or unmarried—are inhibited sexual desire and discrepancy of sexual desire. Unfortunately, many “remedies,” such as sharing sex fantasies, being verbally explicit during sex, or using porn videos, just make the problem worse, adding embarrassment and hopelessness to an unhappy situation. In this presentation, Dr. McCarthy, expert sexologist and psychologist, will discuss how committed couples can identify the sexual style that works best for them—complementary, traditional, best friends, and emotionally expressive. He will then explore in detail how to help couples find sexual strategies that are congruent with their own preferred style, work with the specific vulnerabilities of each style that can subvert sexual desire, and identify different modes of arousal suited to different couples. He offers thought-provoking ideas as to the flaws in using either traditional couples or sex therapy alone, proposing an integrative psychobiosocial model of sexuality based on new data.
Panel Dialogue:
What New Research Tells Us About Effective Treatment Methods
Moderated by Drs. Judith Zucker Anderson and Marion F. Solomon
Faculty: Drs. Schwartz, Johnson, McCarthy, Tatkin, and Fisher
Sunday, November 14, 2010
The Drive to Love & Who You Choose:
Neurobiology of Desire
Helen Fisher, Ph.D.
What makes us love? What makes us fall out of love? Why do we fall in love with one person rather than another? Dr. Helen Fisher, one of the world’s leading experts on love, examines the evolutionary, biological and neurological underpinnings of mating and reproduction. She discusses primary brain systems for sex drive, romantic love and attachment. She suggests methods to effectively “reach” a partner based on what is known about the biology of personality, including four very broad personality dimensions associated with the brain systems, (dopamine, serotonin, testosterone and estrogen/oxytocin). Dr. Fisher’s ground-breaking brain scanning research on couples newly in love, those rejected in love and in long-term relationships, reveals the brain circuitry associated with such seemingly unquantifiable states as romantic love and long-term bonding. She reports also on research data from 40,000 men and women, and clarifies why some types match up well, whereas other “love” relationships are problematic. Her presentation provides important information for understanding love relations of our patients, and of ourselves.
Have Your Cake & Eat It Too:
Sexual Vitality & Secure Functioning
Stan Tatkin, Psy.D.
Distressed couples come into therapy when their repeated interactions create intense states of unpleasant emotional arousal that affects the nervous system—they literally “get on each other’s nerves” and experience a threat response in the presence of the other. Sex presents one of the most daunting arenas of couple interaction where insecure attachment and experience of the near senses (smell, taste, touch, and vision) can lead to mutual dysregulation. This presentation offers an approach to couples therapy based on principles of attachment, developmental neuroscience, autonomic nervous system arousal, and therapeutic enactment. Dr. Tatkin will discuss how to penetrate beneath the level of a couple’s narrative and into the fast-moving, implicit, and mostly non-conscious level of interpersonal neurobiology. You will learn how to dissect sexual complaints and identify attachment models and neurobiological deficits that get in the way of libido, arousal and performance. Through lecture and video case examples, this talk will present methods of assessing, predicting, and treating sexual issues from a psychobiological perspective.
Panel Dialogue:
What New Research Tells Us About Effective Treatment Methods
Moderated by Drs. Judith Zucker Anderson and Marion F. Solomon
Faculty: Drs. Schwartz, Johnson, McCarthy, Tatkin, and Fisher