There are arguments for and against a male-female therapeutic team as recommended by Masters and Johnson. The therapist of one sex is best able to describe the reaction patterns of that sex to the patient of the opposite sex. This is a valuable means of improving communication between them. Also, during the therapy session one therapist can take the lead in therapy, while the other watches for verbal and body cues which may be important in the program but might be overlooked by a single therapist. Such cues may be particularly significant and can be used during the therapeutic interview. In the treatment of sexual dysfunction, a transference relationship can be very quickly established and since it is commonly a short period of treatment, there is not time to resolve such a relationship and therefore it should be avoided. On the other hand, the male-female treatment team is more expensive.
When the sexual dysfunction develops as a symptom of a basic neurotic problem or of a psychotherapeutically treatable psychosis, then a significant period of traditional psychotherapy should be undertaken while at the same time, adequate consideration of the sexual aspect of the patient’s problem is necessary. As an aside, it should be noted that oftentimes patients come to the Masters and Johnson Institute after years of psychotherapy, and yet become sexually functional after only ten to twelve days of therapy.
*241/187/5*
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
You must be logged in to post a comment.