Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Working with the Unconscious in Sex Therapy (2 CE Hours, 2026)

Course Description:

This training explores psychoanalytic sex therapy as an integrative clinical framework for understanding sexuality, desire, and sexual symptoms through the lens of unconscious process,
relational dynamics, and embodied emotional experience.

While contemporary sex therapy often emphasizes behavioral interventions, communication strategies, psychoeducation, and symptom reduction, many clients present with sexual concerns that are also shaped by unconscious conflict, attachment patterns, shame, trauma, and relational history. This course will explore how psychoanalytic thinking can deepen assessment, case conceptualization, and treatment in sex therapy practice.

Participants will be introduced to core psychoanalytic concepts relevant to sexual treatment, including symptom function, repetition, transference and countertransference, erotic shame, relational dynamics, and the unconscious meanings that may organize sexual symptoms. The training will also incorporate contemporary trauma-informed and somatic perspectives, highlighting how sexuality is shaped not only by cognition and relationship patterns, but also by nervous system regulation and embodied experience.

Clinical case material will be used throughout to illustrate how psychoanalytic approaches can be thoughtfully integrated with contemporary sex therapy practice.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe core psychoanalytic concepts relevant to sex therapy treatment, including unconscious conflict, symptom function, transference, and countertransference.
• Identify how attachment dynamics, shame, and relational history may shape sexual symptoms and patterns of desire.
• Explain how trauma-informed and somatic perspectives can complement psychoanalytic approaches to sexual treatment.
• Apply psychoanalytic case conceptualization to common presenting concerns in sex therapy practice.

Activity Schedule:

TBD

Speaker Bio:

Juliane Maxwald, LP, is a psychoanalyst, couples therapist, and certified sex therapist. For over two decades, she has helped individuals and couples move through challenges like low desire, infidelity, anxiety, burnout, and compulsive behaviors — while also uncovering the deeper truths that shape how we love, work, and connect. Her approach combines insight with action, bringing clarity and change that lasts.

She serves on faculty at the New York Graduate School of Psychoanalysis and the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, where she teaches, supervises, and mentors clinicians nationwide.

She is also the author of two forthcoming books, Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality: A clinician’s guide to working with erotic symptoms, fantasy, trauma, and relational repair, and Talking About Sex: A Guide to Confidence, Connection and Communication: A practical, warm companion for individuals and couples who want to feel more at ease with their sexuality and each other.

Class originally recorded: upcoming

Social workers completing this course receive 2 general continuing education credits.