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This is not a book primarily for analysts but is aimed at any and all therapists who may encounter patients with sexual difficulties. Denman believes that a full understanding of sexuality requires not merely psychological understanding but a proper grasp of biological information and of the social and cultural factors influencing our attitudes and beliefs about sex. Accordingly, she provides a thorough, well researched and comprehensive review of a wide range of sexual issues from each of these points of view. The first three chapters deal successively with biology and socio-biology, psychology and psychoanalysis, and anthropology and sociology. A fourth chapter considers feminism and queer theory as examples of political activism in relation to sex. The rest of the book considers specific topics, including homosexuality, ‘transgressive’ sex, transexuals, sex therapy and sex in the consulting room.
While critical of unquestioned social and cultural value systems, especially in psychoanalysis, Denman clearly has a strongly held value system of her own which she declares from the outset as a permissive non-judgemental and non-pathologizing attitude to sex that she terms ‘sex positive’.
This approach has advantages and disadvantages. It is refreshing to be reminded that the multifarious pleasures of sex often do not conform to the psychoanalytic ideal of whole object loving relatedness. This is one reason why Denman is critical of the vast majority of psychoanalytic thinking which she sees as constrained by unacknowledged cultural prejudices in favour of heterosexual monogamy and a ‘Christian horror of licence’ (p. 293). Denman's approach also facilitates an attitude of open minded, sensible and humane good sense. While reviewing an enormous range of literature in biology, psychology and social and cultural theory, she recognizes that most of it is inconclusive and/or contradictory and that there are no clear or easy answers to contentious issues such as the origin of h