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Conjoint Sex Therapy

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Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy

Synonyms

Couple’s sex therapy; Couple’s therapy with sexual issues; Systemic sex therapy

Introduction

Until recently, psychological and/or medical interventions were the treatment of choice for sexual dysfunction. Psychological treatment often focused on the individual with the sexual concern and included cognitive and/or behavioral techniques to alleviate sexual problems, whereas medical treatment alters an individual’s physiological response (Heiman 2002). More recently, conjoint sex therapy has emerged as a more systemic approach to treating sexual dysfunctions that attends to the role of relationships in the etiology and treatment of sexual concerns.

In 1970, Masters and Johnson proposed there was value in including partners as a way of helping the individual with sexual dysfunction. Even with this new approach, Masters and Johnson were criticized for only giving lip service to the idea of working with couples as they did not conceptualize and treat sexual problems systemically....

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References

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Correspondence to Darbi M. Miller .

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Miller, D.M., McComb, J., Earl, R.M. (2019). Conjoint Sex Therapy. In: Lebow, J.L., Chambers, A.L., Breunlin, D.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49425-8_107

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