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This collection of papers discusses a wide range of subjects pertinent to the origins of sexual disorders and to their treatment. The symposium makes no claim to present a cohesive and integrated point of view. The editor has selected topics to demonstrate that the field of sex therapy "is in flux, that its identity is evolving and that the unification of 1970 has yielded to diversity in 1980." The subjects of the papers include studies and reviews which are relevant to the role biological factors play in sexual development and in the genesis of sexual disorders. These articles discuss modes of therapy which in essence are physiological or physical in nature. There are also reviews of the psychological assessment of psychosexual functioning, the interrelationship of aggression and sexual behavior, and of sexuality in the aging. These studies appear to be comprehensive and may be valuable for someone interested in the current status of the diagnostic and therapeutic issues that concern sex therapists. Several of the papers present a therapeutic approach in overgeneralized terms; they do not begin to do justice to the complexities and difficulties in treating the sexual disorders under discussion.
Carl Birk, however, presents a quite detailed and by and large balanced view of his way of practicing sex therapy. He views sex therapy as a brief therapy, focused on immediate rather than on remote causes, designed specifically for the treatment of sexual dysfunctions (e.g., impotence, lack of orgasm, and premature ejaculation). He utilizes primarily a behavioral approach, adapted from Masters and Johnson, and Kaplan. He nonetheless finds that frequently a supplementary psychological approach is useful in working through unresolved grief and anger before behavioral techniques are applicable.
Four papers will be of particular interest to psychoanalysts. All four elaborate in various ways on the complex interrelationships of psychosexual development and parent-child