Sexuality

Sexuality is an important and powerful dynamic in our lives. The experience of it relies on dynamics of the subjective sphere and thus I consider of great importance the analysis of the different underlying mechanisms that actualize sexuality in every individual. Gaining awareness of the mechanisms that actualize sexuality, can also give an important insight to the general functioning of ourselves.

My personal theory about sexuality is influenced by classic writings (Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Wilhelm Reich Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari), from my research and from my personal experience working with clients and myself. An important distinction I suggest in order to be able to analyze sexuality in depth is that between sexuality and sexual intercourse. The first describes a more general behavior while the second mainly defines the act. Just exactly in the way it happens during the developmental period of our lives. The child discovers sexuality, experiments with it, while sex occurs much later. The definition I suggest is as follows: “Sexuality can be defined as the satisfaction and pleasure we can ensure for ourselves, after first realizing and accepting our need for them.” Sexuality is experienced individually although it is mainly ruled socially. Evolves into a continuum, ranging from being able to provide a glass of water to ourselves or ask for it when we are thirsty, to having a pleasurable sexual experience with a partner. In simple words, it starts from being able to perceive, recognize and meet our needs, and completes into looking for and sharing satisfaction and pleasure in life.

My clinical experience shows that people who have difficulties forming or maintaining functional relationships, also almost always, have a more general difficulty ensuring satisfaction and pleasure for themselves in many contexts. The reasons can be found in the social context in which everyone grows up, in traumatic experiences of the past but also in the lack of knowledge about the mental and physiological mechanisms concerning relationships, sexuality and the psychic functioning in general.

In my sessions we start by analyzing the relationship that someone has with satisfaction and pleasure in general. From how she/he perceives, claims and defends them, reaching specific issues concerning the sexuality of each client. The safe environment of a therapeutic session is an ideal place to observe and discuss the mechanisms that support our relationship with satisfaction, pleasure and sexuality.

Sexual Intimacy Bodywork Individual Sessions
Sexual Intimacy Bodywork Counseling for Couples

I developed a particular type of sessions based on my deep belief that there is an option of choice and lots of improvisation according the way we use our bodies during “sexual dialogues”. Viktor Frankl in his book Man’s search for meaning (1946) states that “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom”. It is exactly there, after stimulus and before response that we form our choice of how to respond. Sexual connecting is an activity during which huge amounts of stimuli of all qualities and intensities are created and sometimes, because of that, we have the perception that the “between stimulus and response space” is too narrow in order for someone to be able to choose a response. But that is not always true. Time does not feel the same for everyone. The feeling of time as perceived by individuals can be influenced by age, by the subjective perception of the activity type an individual performs and also by emotional states (Bruss & Rueschendorf, 2010; Vasile, 2015). Thus everybody can choose a response not if there is enough time but if perceives that there is. Because of the subjectivity of time perception, the corner stone of a fruitful sexual connecting is to cultivate firstly a common time perception and also to learn how to connect with people with different time perception. From my experience as a massage therapist I know that every single body has its own time perception that also can fluctuates for a number of reasons. I usually say to my clients that we all have different inside clocks and thus “what is two minutes for you sometimes could be four minutes for me” or vice versa. When it comes especially to sexual connecting, shared or at least a perception of time “that recognizes differences” adds in our experience the grace of a dancing.

A very common narrative when we talk about heterosexuality is that maybe a woman will not manage to reach climax, while a man may reach it too early. This situation seen from the “shared time perception concept” could even be a good reason for sexual connecting that will allow a woman to share her “I am moving too slow, I will not make it!” with the man’s “I am moving too fast, I will not make it!”. When it comes to homosexuality things are slightly different. Because homosexuality acts more often outside of “boxes”, more subjectivity enters the scene that could make every “constellation” more unique and autonomous. In every case the goal of my sessions is to cultivate the awareness and management of stimuli before the response, recognizing our time perception at the same time and respecting that of others.

I offer two kinds of sessions, one for individuals and one for couples. Both types combine talking and action. The range both of talking and acting are predefined commonly by therapist and the client depending on what they work on. Individual sessions can start with the talking and evolve in a massage-like session where there is touching in every part of the body. Couple sessions start also with the talking and evolve with “verbal sexual experimentations” between the couple, with the therapist be a witness or out of the room depending on whatever feels right for the couple. During all sessions therapist remains clothed and touch is unidirectional from the therapist to the client.

This kind of sessions are for people willing to explore their sexual self, to observe how their sexuality evolves and to experiment in finding paths of sexual expression that add meaning to their experiences, with or without a partner.

    1. Frankl Viktor. (1946). Man’s search for meaning. Beacon Press; Reprint edition (April 25, 2017). ISBN-10: 9780807067994
    2. Bruss, F. & Rueschendorf, Ludger. (2010). On the Perception of Time. Gerontology. 56. 361-70. 10.1159/000272315.
    3. Vasile, Cristian. (2015). Time perception, cognitive
correlates, age and emotions. Procedia – Social and Behavioral
Sciences 187 695 – 699. Published by Elsevier Ltd.