Rum River Counseling, Inc.

Sex Therapy
What does a Sex Therapist Do?

A sex therapist can be a psychiatrist, a marriage & family therapist, a psychologist, or a clinical social worker. We are specially trained in sex therapy methods beyond the minimal amount of training about sexuality that is required for each of those licenses.

There are a few graduate schools in the U.S. that specialize in training for sex therapy. Some people assemble their training by rigorous self-study and by attendance at the major sexological organizations' annual conferences. We have about a dozen scientific journals dedicated solely to sexual research. There are about six major organizations that hold conferences and trainings.

Most sex therapists have a particular awareness of sexuality that rises above personal opinion or personal experiences. We usually have several choices of ways to treat a particular issue when someone presents it. We tailor our treatment to the person(s) before us. We are not a "bigger hammer" there to coerce a person who wants less sex into wanting more. While there is a sexological method to treating sexual issues, sex therapy is completely & exclusively talk therapy.

Sex therapy views sexual issues as being resolved by specifically addressing them, rather than by the assumption that when the individuals in a relationship work out the relationship issues, the sex will just fall into place.
Sex therapists also tend to have much greater than average knowledge about the physiological processes that are a part of human sexuality. We tend to work collaboratively with physicians to address the entirety of the causes of sexual concerns.

We hold a positive outlook on the beneficial influence that sexuality can have on people's lives and in the world in general. And we are not naive about the ill effects that come as a result of sexuality. We simply try to address those issues from a rigorous scientific perspective, rather than from an ideological perspective.

Jennie Graff-Dolezal, MA LMFT is a member of the American Association of Sexuality Educators Counselors & Therapists (AASECT), and provides sex therapy at the Andover location of Rum River Counseling, Inc.

This material has been adopted from an article written by Louanne Cole Weston, PhD for the WebMD website. © 2005 WebMD, Inc. All rights reserved.Louanne Cole Weston, PhD, is a licensed marriage, family, and child counselor and a board-certified sex therapist in practice since 1983. Her work in the field of human sexuality includes extensive experience as a therapist, educator, and researcher.