Services for Other Therapists: Case Consultation and Supervision

Sex is a topic that is invariably on your patients’ minds, but to what extent does it enter the clinical conversation? It’s not uncommon for both patient and therapist to collude in avoiding sex-related issues due to mutual discomfort, or for a therapist to feel de-skilled when addressing sexuality. Many therapists will simply avoid the conversation altogether. This is unfortunate, as the field of sex therapy has a rich and accessible history of clinical theory and a body of practices that lend themselves well to integration with individual psychotherapy and/or couples therapy. To that end, Ian is occasionally able to make himself available to clinicians for case consultation and individual/group supervision.
In addressing your cases, we will typically discuss:

• Therapist self-location when dealing with both heterosexual and LGBTQ sexual issues; using targeted psycho-education to normalize your patients experience of their sexuality; connecting with your patients around “hard to talk about” sex issues and building a therapeutic alliance that will encourage them to open up.
• The assessment of sexual concerns; taking a sexual history, conducting a sex-script analysis and using validated scales and measures to diagnose sex issues; applying the latest sexual science to your case formulation.
• Designing and implementing a sex therapy treatment plan and delivering therapeutic interventions, including cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic, psycho-educational, and pharmacological approaches
• Designing, co-constructing and customizing homework assignments; using the data and feedback from client homework to enhance your treatment outcomes

During supervision, we will be paying close attention to the development and deepening of the therapeutic alliance and the processing of clinical material that happens both in the room and in between sessions through homework assignments.