Psychotherapy and the Promiscuous Patient

Learn effective strategies for therapy with promiscuous patients from this in-depth exploration of the phenomenon of promiscuity in the lives and backgrounds of patients seeking psychotherapy. This unique book features insights about the pitfalls of patients who cannot bear commitment to any one person, or who jeopardize their commitments with a need to spark their lives with promiscuity. Psychotherapy and the Promiscuous Patient teaches psychotherapists to respond to their patients’promiscuous behavior as a symptom of a problem, not the problem itself.

A realm of aspects of promiscuity are explored within the psychiatric context. Promiscuity is very broadly defined in fascinating examinations of adult promiscuity as a result of childhood sexual abuse, hypersexuality in adult males, addiction to the sensation of “falling in love,” career promiscuity, and even psychotherapy as an uncommon “promiscuity’–a nonexclusive, altruistic love. Timely chapters confront the changing distinctions between promiscuity and sex addiction and challenge readers to uncover the various emotional needs met by promiscuity in order to protect patients from their self-destructive behavior.

Knowledgeable practicing psychotherapists relate methods for dealing with patients’constant restlessness and working with a variety of patients in an intimate setting. Psychotherapy and the Promiscuous Patient contains invaluable strategies that can be directly applied to practice including:

• the use of narrative construction and reconstruction as treatment for sexually promiscuous clients
• a self-psychological approach to treatment
• the importance of confusion as an introduction to change in therapy
• a method of self-investigation applied to promiscuous behavior
• the implications of the clinical meaning and therapeutic use of strong-laughter outbursts in psychology
• a self-psychology perspective on transference to therapists
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