Sexual Rupture and Repair: An Approach to Healing Sexual Betrayal (2 CE Hours)

This talk has been approved for 2 hours of Continuing Education Credit by New York State for LCSWs, LPs, LMSWs and LMHCs, by the American Psychological Association for Psychologists, and by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists for Sex Therapists. Completion of this program does not ensure or guarantee AASECT certification. For further information please contact info@aasect.org.

Many therapists are acquainted with treatment protocols about how to help couples mend from affairs or other sexual behaviors experienced as betrayals. Even when partners express desire to rebuild trust and intimacy the road to recovery can be strewn with ruptures large and small. This presentation will explore how to prepare for and learn from ruptures as they emerge on the road toward relationship repair and restoration. It will include how to engage partners in this difficult process involving repeated betrayal, anger, shame, hopelessness, and guilt without getting caught in the intense undertow of countertransference involved in the therapeutic process.

Suzanne Iasenza, PhD, is faculty at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis (ICP), teaches in the workshop series at the Ackerman Institute for the Family, and maintains a practice in psychotherapy and sex therapy in NYC. She’s coeditor of Lesbians and Psychoanalysis: Revolutions in Theory and Practice (1995) and Lesbians, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis: The Second Wave (2015). Her forthcoming book, Transforming Sexual Narratives, is being published by Routledge.