Sex Therapy – Desire, Shame, and the Language of the Body
Sex is rarely just about sex. It’s about desire – and desire and is never simple. It’s shaped by fantasy, shame, and the ways we learned what it meant to be wanted, or not wanted, early in life.
Many people seek sex therapy thinking they need to “fix” a dysfunction or restore intimacy. But often, the problem isn’t mechanical – it’s symbolic. Something in the relationship between the body and language has broken down.
Desire thrives on mystery and difference, yet modern culture teaches us to chase certainty: performance, technique, control. Psychoanalysis takes another route – it invites us to speak about what’s difficult, confusing, or even embarrassing.
Through therapy, we begin to understand the meanings attached to sex. What it represents, what it defends against, what it expresses beyond words. Sometimes, it’s only when people stop trying to “solve” their sexual problems that something real can shift.
Our desire moves strangely – sometimes disappearing where love feels strongest, or surfacing in places we don’t expect. In therapeutic work, we don’t try to silence those parts, but to make them speak, and to bring the symptom into the field of language, where some choice and movement become possible.
Through therapy for sexual difficulties, giving voice to the symptom allows it to shift. In that movement a new kind of performance becomes possible, one that feels less like acting and more like one’s own.
More on Sex TherapyRecommended Reading:
- Jacques Lacan: Seminar VIII: Transference
- Éric Laurent: The Two Sexes and the Other Jouissance
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