Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy

by Juliane Maxwald

Psychoanalytic Sex Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality bridges the gap between depth psychology and modern sex therapy, offering a fresh, integrative approach to understanding sexual struggles.

Rather than treating symptoms like low desire, intimacy challenges, or compulsive behaviors as dysfunctions to fix, this book reveals how they often carry emotional meaning linked to trauma, attachment, and unspoken conflict. Drawing on compelling clinical stories and contemporary theory, Juliane Maxwald helps clinicians decode the unconscious narratives behind sexual concerns. Chapters explore topics such as desire discrepancy, pornography, consensual nonmonogamy, erectile unpredictability, and narcissism, demonstrating how the thoughtful integration of technique and depth-oriented insight can foster real change. Grounded, accessible, and clinically rich, this book invites therapists to listen to sexuality not just as behavior, but as a window into emotional life—and as a story the psyche tells through the body.

This is essential reading for psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and sex therapists seeking to deepen their work with issues related to sex, intimacy, and relational life.

Genres: Psychoanalysis

184 pages, Paperback

Published December 29, 2025

Reviews

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quite easy read, more "sex therapy" than "psychoanalytic." The author writes in a clear, transparent way, integrating different concepts and practices from sex therapy with a few chosen psychoanalytic theories and concepts (e.g. Winnicott's focus on play, transitional space and -objects). The book focuses on clinical practice and leans heavily on clinical case material, which is useful for translating theoretical concepts into real life phenomenons and interactions (both in the consulting room and in life in general). It also makes an important point about harvesting the 'best of both worlds': The sex positive, non-pathologizing view of sexuality from sex therapy, and the deeper understanding drawing from psychoanslysis.

I came to the book from a psychoanalytic perspective, and found it quite basic, often using the same theoretical concepts and thinkers across different chapters (Winnicott, Mitchell, Benjamin). I imagine this will sit well with newcomers to psychoanalytic thinking, but I personally found it a bit repetetive and lacking depth and nuance. However, in as short a book ad this one, there are limits to how deep you can go.

And, as many other Routledge publications, it suffers from poor editing and citational practice.