Full Course Description

Love and Intimacy in Modern Relationships

Program Information

Target Audience

Psychologists, Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, and other Behavioral Health Professionals

Objectives

Assess the motivations behind affairs and their possible meanings in different client relationships to inform the clinician’s choice of treatment interventions.
Determine the cost and benefits of truth telling and transparency among couples where at least one has been emotional or physically unfaithful.
Analyze the societal changes such as intimacy, and sexuality, that enter the consultation room and its clinical implications among couples.
Determine clinical strategies to use with the couples’ children when communicating the outcome or process of the parents’ relationship.

Outline

The History of Relationships

Past Traditional Roles vs. Today’s Roles
The Social Hierarchies

Conversations at the Core of Relationships

The Meaning behind Language - Historical vs. Today’s

Sexuality

Today’s Purpose of Sex
Audio Demonstration

The Meaning of Monogamy

Audio Demonstration

The Negative Effects of Patriarchy on Relationships

Male Sexuality Insecurities
The Fine Line between Power and Violence during Sex
The Rapid Change in Relationships

Taking the Time to Listen in the Consultation Room

Copyright : 03/24/2018

Learning from Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity & Pathways to Intimacy

Program Information

Target Audience

Psychologists, Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, and other Behavioral Health Professionals

Objectives

Assess the motivations behind affairs and their possible meanings in different client relationships to inform the clinician’s choice of treatment interventions.
Determine the cost and benefits of truth telling and transparency among couples where at least one has been emotional or physically unfaithful.
Analyze the societal changes such as intimacy, and sexuality, that enter the consultation room and its clinical implications among couples.
Determine clinical strategies to use with the couples’ children when communicating the outcome or process of the parents’ relationship.

Outline

The Fear and Fascination With Affairs

Historically condemned yet universally practiced.
What about cheating is so compelling?

Marriage, Sex, Intimacy, and Monogamy: A Brief Historical Overview

Marriage - from economic unit to romantic enterprise.
The romantic ideal.
The enshrinement of intimacy.
The sexualization of love: beyond sex for reproduction and woman’s marital duty (in the west).
The shift from sexual duty to sexual rights and sexual desire and pleasure.
Sustaining
The New Norm: Reconciling the domestic and the erotic in one relationship
Sexual satisfaction
The emotional and erotic challenges of the egalitarian couple.

Infidelity and Monogamy: Yesterday and Today

Monogamy - from patriarchy and lineage to a conviction of love.
Modern infidelity
The ideal of monogamy vs. the reality of infidelity.
From sin to betrayal, from fornication to sex.
The male double standard and gender differences around infidelity.
Gender-shifts: The double standard and the rise of female infidelity.

The Therapeutic Culture of Infidelity | Affairs

A symptom of problems in the couple.
Language of moral condemnation, vilification, or pathologizing, “Perpetrator/ Victim”.
Longstanding pathologies or childhood wounds
Belief in the redemptive power of confession and full disclosure of infidelity.
Rebuilding trust and intimacy
Affairs described as the story of a couple rather than the story of a triangle.
Lack of differentiation between the concepts of loyalty, fidelity and sexual exclusivity.

A Dual Perspective to Infidelity

Affair assumptions vs. reality
Rethinking loyalty and faithfulness.
Bringing to infidelity a dual perspective of hurt and betrayal on one side and growth and expansion on the other.
Secrets: A matter of autonomy as well as power over?

Rethinking Fidelity

Mapping the differentiation between concepts of fidelity and exclusiveness.
Defining fidelity as a relational constancy, a pact of emotional commitment, respect and loyalty, which can or not include sexual exclusivity.

Ethical and Existential Questions

Why does sexual betrayal hurt so much? How is it different from emotional betrayal?
Is faithfulness synonymous with sexual exclusivity?
Is faithfulness a virtue, a need for security, for propriety, a quest for comfort?
Is infidelity weakness and cowardice, or boldness and courage?
Can lying be a form of protection?
In the presence of multiple emotional betrayals - neglect, indifference, contempt, humiliation, abusiveness - is fidelity a virtue or weakness?
What is the relation between: Truth and Protection, Growth and Betrayal, Transparency, Privacy, and Secrecy, Loyalty and Faithfulness?
Is there a difference when the external relationship is emotional versus sexual?
Is jealousy a feeling we can/should transcend?
Is love in its essence monogamous?
Is the notion of property the enemy of love?
Is possessiveness an archaic remainder of patriarchy or is it fundamental to love?
Does the unfaithful have a right to remain silent?
What is the moral question about virtual infidelities? What is the morality of imagination?
Is chatting cheating?

Clinical Questions

Should we push for revelation? Is it essential to restoration?
What to do when we are told a secret the other partner doesn’t know?
Can we help a relationship while there’s a hidden affair?
How to discuss the topic of monogamy in the context of therapy?
Secrets: A matter of autonomy or power over?
Who decides whether internet activity is "infidelity"--the actor? The outraged spouse? The therapist?

Sex and Love Online

Romantic seductiveness of cyberspace
The egalitarianism of cyberspace: sexual appearance, age, gender, race and relations are scarcely relevant online.

Meanings and Motives of Affairs

General circumstances: life cycle, personal history, relational vulnerability, institutional pressures, existential dilemmas, gender influences, sexual orientation.
Affairs are less about sex and more about desire.
Reaction to other problems of life (loss of job, parent illness, loneliness, erotic alienation).
To gratify a paraphilic longing.
To experience same sex experience.
Sexual compulsivity.
Women seeking to re-experience themselves as sexual beings after kids.
A response to the feeling of insecurity about one’s sense of masculinity and femininity.
Secrets are a pathway to autonomy, for in secrets we activate our own will, free from the pleasing and caretaking.
Balance and stabilize the relation; an affair in order to preserve the marriage.

Affairs are Powered by Longing and Loss

The quest for a new self - reconnecting with lost parts of oneself.
Affairs often happen on the heels of death or a loss. Their intensity pushes back the imminence of death. Affairs as an antidote to death.
A response to long-standing sexual frustration.
A quest for aliveness and adventure.
A desire to experience lives not lived.
A quest for emotional connection.

Bad Marriages/Good Affairs

To stir jealousy and get our partner interested in us again.
To empower oneself and escape oppression and abuse.
As an act of revenge.

Role of the Therapist

Awareness of our own values, beliefs, and assumptions about infidelity and monogamy
Our personal history and experience with infidelity
Infidelity’s Triggers
Identifying with the unfaithful highlights the values of growth and autonomy
Identifying with the betrayed highlights loss of trust and betrayal.

The Politics and Secrets of Revelation

Cost and Benefits of Truth Telling and Transparency:
- Positive effects of revelation
- Positive effects of secrets
- Open Secret Policy
- Telling and Hearing
- Sexual honesty
- Restoring intimacy
- The discovery of an affair

Privacy

Privacy - a functional boundary.

Copyright : 05/24/2018

How to Work on Sex and Intimacy with Men

Program Information

Objectives

Utilize strategies to help men share their sexual attitudes and values within the therapeutic setting.

Outline

Intro to conversation
Identifying unique aspects of working with male clients and sexuality
Discussion of specific strategies therapists can use within the clinical setting
Summary of Conversation

Target Audience

Psychologists, Counselors, Social Workers, Case Managers, Addiction Counselors, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, and other Mental Health Professionals

BONUS: Therapy and the Promise of Transformation: How Do We See Our Role?

Program Information

Target Audience

Psychologists, Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, and other Behavioral Health Professionals

Objectives

Articulate the clinical implications of isolation and polarization in clients as it relates to psychoeducation.
Determine how counselor ambitions influences the therapeutic relationship and identify monitoring strategies to minimize the potential impact on the client.

Outline

Transformation in Psychotherapy

Question, Reflection and Audience Conversation

Transformation Defined in Different Ways

Interpersonal Change
Monitoring Your Ambitions with Your Client
Collaboration between Society and Psychotherapy

The Individual Adapting to Problematic Situations

Influencing the Larger Culture
Using Therapy Outside of the Office
- Working within Communities

The Public Health Concerns of Isolation

Getting to Know Other
Change as Relational
Accessing Resources to Help Therapy

Question, Reflection and Audience Conversation

The Downfalls of Polarizing Oneself from Society

Benefits Interacting with Differing Viewpoints

Change, Trust, and Risks

Being Ok with Being Uncomfortable