Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Thoughts about Desire and Arousal...

     As a co-author of the wiki-page, I am quite familiar with the information on the page. Likewise, preparing for the presentation resulted in careful reading of the applicable chapters as well as what felt like a mind-numbing amount of articles. You Tube also offers no shortage of videos about arousal and desire... although one side note: trying typing "Male Desire Disorder" or anything of the like. I found that MOST videos were still about females. A frustrating discovery, and a poignant example of our societal thought that men don't have a "problem" with desire; that is, after all, the cornerstone of their masculinity. As Tiffani pointed out, the void of male desire dysfunction is not actually true in the clinical world. I wonder what it feels like for a man who is struggling with low sexual desire; it cannot help to also feel like a social outlier because of it.
     One topic that bubbled to the surface of most readings, which I hope we did an adequate job representing on our wiki-page, is the importance of the initial assessment. As an emerging therapist, I think it could be easy to jump too quickly to trying to solve the "problem". If all focus is steered to desire and sexual functioning, the approach will become very medicalized, and is likely miss relational and psychological factors contributing to low desire. Listening for clues in the client's sexual history, current relationship status, and any secrets they have not disclosed to their partner, are much more likely to highlight the etiology of a specific case of desire dysfunction.

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