Sensuality and Sexuality Across the Divide of Shame

Joseph D. Lichtenberg, M.D., is Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanaytic Inquiry, Director Emeritus of the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and past President of the International Council for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology. He has authored and edited numerous books and articles, including Craft and Spirit: A Guide to the Exploratory Psychotherapies (Analytic Press, 2005) and, with Frank Lachmann and James Fosshage, A Sprit of Inquiry: Communication in Psychoanalysis (Analytic Press, 2002).

• Looking at Sensuality and Sexuality Across the Divide of Shame. The Oedipus Complex in the 21st Century. Intimacy with the Gendered Self. Veronica: A Case Example. Fathers and Daughters, Mothers and Daughters. Middle Childhood and Adolescence. Attachment Love, Romantic Love, Lustful Love, Lust without Love, Transference Love. Coda.

"Lichtenberg explores with remarkably compelling clinical examples, the experiential disparity between sensuality (the integration of affection and sensual) and shame-dominated sexuality in dyadic and triadic experiences and romantic love, elaborating with sensitivity and clarity a wide-range of disturbances and disruptions of intimacy that Freud briefly considered in his abbreviated 1911 contribution. But he does much more in this contribution in his detailed and illuminating consideration of the development of sensuality and sexuality throughout the life cycle – from infancy, to the oedipal phase, to the different experiences of girls and boys in middle childhood and adolescence, to a consideration of different forms of attachment in adulthood. Lichtenberg has made a major contribution to the understanding of the complex yet subtle development of intimacy and the multiplicity of factors that can disrupt the development of this vital component of human existence." - Sidney J. Blatt, Ph.D.