A sex therapist can be a psychiatrist, a marriage and family therapist, a psychologist, or a clinical social worker. We are specially trained in sex therapy methods beyond the minimal amount of training about sexuality that is required for each of those licenses.
There are a few graduate schools in the U.S. that specialize in training for sex therapy.
Some people assemble their training by rigorous self-study and by
attendance at the major sexological organizations' annual conferences.
We have about a dozen scientific journals dedicated solely to sexual
research. There are about six major organizations that hold conferences
and trainings.
So seeing a sex therapist is like going to a gynecologist
for gynecological problems rather than to a family practice physician.
Both have specialized particularly in that area. That isn't to say that
one couldn't get good help from a non-sex therapist for a sexual issue,
it's just that the likelihood might be a bit less.
Most sex therapists have a particular awareness of
sexuality that rises above personal opinion or personal experiences. We
usually have several choices of ways to treat a particular issue when
someone presents it. We tailor our treatment to the person(s) before us.
We are not a "bigger hammer" there to coerce a person who wants less
sex into wanting more. There is a sexological method to treating sexual
issues. With the exception of when separate sexual surrogate therapists are added (in a very small number of cases), sex therapy is completely talk therapy.
Sex therapy views sexual issues as being resolved
by specifically addressing them, rather than by the assumption that when
the individuals in a relationship work out the relationship issues, the
sex will just fall into place. For years, I have had a practice full of
couples for whom that simply was not true.
Sex therapists also tend to have much greater than
average knowledge about the physiological processes that are a part of
human sexuality. We tend to work collaboratively with physicians to
address the entirety of the causes of sexual concerns.
I would venture to say
that there is near unanimity in the sex field when it comes to
acceptance of sexual orientations and transgender existence. I have
never met a sex therapist who tried to cure homosexuality -- though
there are other mental health practitioners who do attempt to do so.
We hold a positive outlook on the beneficial
influence that sexuality can have on people's lives and in the world in
general. And we are not naive about the ill effects that come as a
result of sexuality. We simply try to address those issues from a
rigorous scientific perspective, rather than from an ideological
perspective.
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