Sexual Therapy for Couples: An Integrative Therapy for Sexual Dysfunction

During the last four decades, the effectiveness of sexual therapy for couples has become widely accepted. The methods initially devised by Masters and Johnson during the sixties, using a behavioural paradigm, were subsequently developed to include a psychoanalytical approach to sexual dysfunction and a better understanding of its significance within the dynamic structure of the couple. Over the last two decades, the joint therapy model proposed by the Hamburg school of sexology has served as a basis for the clinical activity of the Consultation conjugale et de sexologie (Department of marriage counselling and sexology) at the Profa Centre in Lausanne. This integrated approach emphasizes the unconscious mechanisms which underlie the sexological symptom, while recognizing the possibility of somatic causes and taking into account the interpersonal aspects of dysfunction. The couple is given behavioural prescriptions, to be carried out in private, and thereby becomes its own therapist.