Chapter 11 PUTTING IT…together

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A Private Topic Draws Public Attention

For all the public interest in sexual and gender disorders, clinical theorists and practitioners have only recently begun to understand their nature and how to treat them. As a result of research done over the past few decades, people with sexual dysfunctions are no longer doomed to a lifetime of sexual frustration. At the same time, however, insights into the causes and treatment of paraphilic disorders and gender dysphoria remain limited.

CLINICAL CHOICES

Now that you’ve read about disorders of sex and gender, try the interactive case study for this chapter. See if you are able to identify Charles’s symptoms and suggest a diagnosis based on his symptoms. What kind of treatment would be most effective for Charles? Go to LaunchPad to access Clinical Choices.

Studies of sexual dysfunctions have pointed to many psychological, sociocultural, and biological causes. Often, as you have seen with so many disorders, the various causes may interact to produce a particular dysfunction, as in erectile disorder and female orgasmic disorder. For some dysfunctions, however, one cause alone is dominant, and integrated explanations may be inaccurate and unproductive. Some sexual pain dysfunctions, for example, have a physical cause exclusively.

Recent work has also yielded important progress in the treatment of sexual dysfunctions, and people with such problems are now often helped greatly by therapy. Sex therapy is usually a complex program tailored to the particular problems of an individual or couple. Techniques from the various models may be combined, although in some instances the particular problem calls primarily for one approach.

One of the most important insights to emerge from all of this work is that education about sexual dysfunctions can be as important as therapy. Sexual myths are still taken so seriously that they often lead to feelings of shame, self-hatred, isolation, and hopelessness—feelings that themselves contribute to sexual difficulty. Even a modest amount of education can help people who are in treatment.

In fact, most people can benefit from a more accurate understanding of sexual functioning. Public education about sexual functioning—through the Internet, books, television and radio, school programs, group presentations, and the like—has become a major clinical focus. It is important that these efforts continue and even increase in the coming years.