Sexual Attraction in Therapy: Clinical Perspectives on Moving Beyond the Taboo – A Guide for Training and Practice

Sexual Attraction in Therapy presents new and original theoretical and clinical insights from multiple perspectives into working with the complex phenomenon of sexual attraction in therapy. Challenging practitioners to think about sexual attraction as a normal dynamic developing through the unique intimacy of the therapy encounter, it encourages readers to treat sexual attraction as an opportunity for deeper work, rather than as a dread. This text fills an important gap in the market by moving beyond psychoanalytic theories of transference and countertransference, and discussing views on theory, training, practice and research from relational/integrative, cognitive behavioural, acceptance and commitment, existential, phenomenological, psychoanalytic and systemic approaches.   The contributors to the text – including Doris MIlwain, Michael Worrell, John Sommers–Flanagan and Martin Milton – are highly experienced psychologists and psychotherapists with international reputations as theorists on the erotic in clinical practice. Illustrated with detailed case material and strategies for managing sexual attraction, this book  aims to stimulate understanding and dialogue by bringing theory and practice from a variety of perspectives together in one comprehensive volume.

Maria Luca is a Reader in Psychotherapy and Counselling Psychology, Senior Research Fellow, and Head of the Reflections Research Centre in the School of Psychotherapy and Counselling Psychology, Regent’s University London, UK. She has extensive clinical experience as a psychotherapist in the NHS and runs a private practice in London. She is a UKCP accredited psychotherapist, a BACP senior accredited counselling supervisor, and editor of The Therapeutic Frame in the Clinical Context: Integrative Perspectives (2004).