Juliane Maxwald, "Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)

Juliane Maxwald, "Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)

Today I spoke with Juliane Maxwald abut her new book Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality (Taylor & Francis, 2025). Maxwald bridges psychoanalytic theory with contemporary sex therapy to demonstrate that sexual symptoms are rarely just about sex—they're embodied expressions of unconscious conflict, early attachment wounds, relational trauma, and unmet developmental needs. Through eleven richly detailed clinical cases—including Jon's shame-bound spanking fantasies, Connie's trauma-releasing masturbation, Maurice's porn use masking performance anxiety, Joelle's compulsive sexual behavior, Brian's BDSM healing, and Anna and Darren's painful desire discrepancy—Maxwald shows how integrating psychodynamic insight with behavioral interventions, somatic awareness, and trauma-informed care creates transformative healing. The book argues that sexuality is a "portal to the unconscious," where repetition compulsion, dissociation, shame, and erotic transference play out in the body, and that therapeutic work requires not just fixing dysfunction but decoding symbolic meanings, tolerating ambiguity, attending to countertransference, and creating relational safety where clients can reclaim embodied agency, authentic desire, and the capacity for surrender—while acknowledging that sometimes, pragmatically, "a cigar is just a cigar" and simpler medical or behavioral solutions serve clients best. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

Episoder(393)

Todd McGowan, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets” (Columbia UP, 2016)

Todd McGowan, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets” (Columbia UP, 2016)

Todd McGowan‘s Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets (Columbia University Press, 2016) elegantly employs psychoanalytic thinking to unpack the lure of capitalism. He argues that we a...

19 Mar 201759min

Brent Willock, et.al. “Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity and Difference: Navigating the Divide” (Routledge, 2017)

Brent Willock, et.al. “Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity and Difference: Navigating the Divide” (Routledge, 2017)

Literature and training in diversity and multiculturalism typically emphasize cultural differences–how to identify them, and the importance of honoring them. But does such an emphasis neglect other im...

13 Mar 201757min

Philip Rosenbaum, “Making our Ideas Clear: Pragmatism in Psychoanalysis” (Information Age Publishing, 2015)

Philip Rosenbaum, “Making our Ideas Clear: Pragmatism in Psychoanalysis” (Information Age Publishing, 2015)

Pragmatism, as a philosophical concept, is often misunderstood and misapplied. Fortunately, I had the chance to speak with Philip Rosenbaum, psychoanalyst and editor of the book Making our Ideas Clear...

4 Jan 201750min

Irwin Hirsch, “The Interpersonal Tradition: The Origins of Psychoanalytic Subjectivity” (Routledge, 2015)

Irwin Hirsch, “The Interpersonal Tradition: The Origins of Psychoanalytic Subjectivity” (Routledge, 2015)

The Interpersonal School of psychoanalysis developed independent of the classical tradition in the United States early in the twentieth century, and was a harbinger to the relational thinking of the c...

9 Des 201658min

Orna Ophir, “On the Borderland of Madness: Psychosis, Psychoanalysis, and Psychiatry in Postwar USA” (Routledge, 2015)

Orna Ophir, “On the Borderland of Madness: Psychosis, Psychoanalysis, and Psychiatry in Postwar USA” (Routledge, 2015)

When it comes to the history of psychoanalysis and psychiatry in the United States, to paraphrase Luce Irigaray, one never stirs without the other. While Freud sent Theodore Reik across the ocean to p...

7 Nov 20161h 1min

Jill Gentile, “Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire” (Karnac Books, 2016)

Jill Gentile, “Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire” (Karnac Books, 2016)

In Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire (Karnac Books, 2016), Psychoanalyst Jill Gentile explores the intersection between Freuds fundamental rule of free association and freedom ...

21 Okt 20161h

Gail Hornstein, “To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann” (Other Books, 2005)

Gail Hornstein, “To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann” (Other Books, 2005)

The life of the German-born, pioneering American psychoanalyst, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, is intriguing enough in itself, but in the biography, To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life of F...

13 Okt 201659min

Jonathan Garb, “Yearnings of the Soul: Psychological Thought in Modern Kabbalah” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015)

Jonathan Garb, “Yearnings of the Soul: Psychological Thought in Modern Kabbalah” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015)

In Yearnings of the Soul: Psychological Thought in Modern Kabbalah (University of Chicago Press, 2015), Jonathan Garb, the Gershom Scholem Professor in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew U...

22 Aug 201630min

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