Sex, Attachment and Couple Psychotherapy

Christopher Clulow, PhD, is a Senior Fellow of the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, London, where he works as a visiting lecturer and researcher. He has published extensively on marriage, partnerships, parenthood and couple psychotherapy, most recently from an attachment perspective. He has a long history of contributing to thinking about the processes involved in ending relationships, and his most recent work has involved heading up a project identifying competences for treating depression through couple therapy under the Department of Health's Improving Access to Psychological Therapies initiative. He has also recently consulted to and evaluated interventions provided by a mental health agency to reduce depression in parents of young children. He is a founding member and past Deputy Chair of the British Society of Couple Psychotherapists and Counsellors and a member of the editorial board for the journal 'Couple and Family Psychoanalysis'.

Foreword -- The facts of life: an introduction -- Psychoanalysis and sexpertise -- What do we mean by “sex”? -- Lively and deathly intercourse -- Separated attachments and sexual aliveness -- Dynamics and disorders of sexual desire -- Sexual dread and the therapist’s desire -- Loss of desire and therapist dread -- Loss of desire: a psycho-sexual case study -- Power vs. love in sadomasochistic couple relationships -- From fear of intimacy to perversion -- Perversion as protection -- Intimacy and sexuality in later life