Talking about Sex in Groups Hosted by the Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society (EGPS)
Presenters
Judith White, LCSW, CGP, CST
Juliane Maxwald, MA, LP, CST
Ed Elder, MDiv, LMHC, LMFT
This spring event brings together clinicians to think about sexuality in the group therapy setting. Talking about Sex in Groups will explore the clinical, relational, and emotional complexities that arise when sexual material enters group process, offering space for thoughtful reflection on a topic that is often charged, nuanced, and under-discussed. This event is part of EGPS’s annual spring programming, which is designed to celebrate the field of group therapy by bringing together inspiring group leaders to share their thinking, experience, and clinical craft.
Who This Event Is For
This event is appropriate for group therapists, psychoanalytic clinicians, and other mental health professionals interested in group process, sexuality, and relational work. EGPS describes its spring event as open to members as well as group leaders more broadly.
About the Event Series
EGPS holds a spring event each year to highlight the field of group therapy and create an opportunity to learn, share, and engage together around group work.
Shame and the Erotic Mind: A Psychoanalytic Lens on Sexuality, Desire, and the Therapeutic Relationship (Online Presentation | 2 CE Credits Available
This workshop explores the complex role of shame in erotic life and in the therapeutic process. Drawing from Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality, Juliane Maxwald integrates psychoanalytic, relational, and somatic frameworks to illuminate how sexual symptoms often conceal unspoken shame, attachment longing, and the fear of exposure.
Through clinical vignettes, theory, and discussion, participants are invited to consider sexuality as a form of unconscious communication and to think about how the analytic relationship can support repair, embodiment, and recognition.
Who This Event Is For
This event is appropriate for clinicians interested in psychoanalysis, sexuality, trauma, and relational treatment, and it is also open to the general public.
About the Presenter
Juliane Maxwald, MA, LP, CST, is a psychoanalyst and certified sex therapist in New York specializing in sexuality, trauma, and relational dynamics. She teaches and supervises nationally in psychoanalytic and sex therapy settings and is the author of Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality.
Registration
Registration is through the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies. General admission is $50, and students may attend free. Linked below.
VIRTUAL: When Sexual Symptoms Speak: Listening to the Unconscious Life of Sexuality Hosted by Psychoanalytic Inquiry
In this lecture, Juliane Maxwald, LP, CST draws on the clinical and theoretical framework of her book, Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality, to explore how sexual difficulties can be understood not simply as problems to be solved, but as forms of unconscious communication
Integrating contemporary psychoanalysis, attachment theory, and trauma-informed sex therapy, the talk examines how desire, avoidance, compulsive patterns, and shutdown often reflect deeper struggles around safety, recognition, shame, and bodily memory. Through clinical vignettes, participants will consider how sexual symptoms may be organized at the level of the nervous system and relational experience rather than conscious insight alone, and how therapeutic change often requires experiential as well as interpretive work.
The presentation highlights how analytic listening, somatic awareness, and attention to relational experience can deepen clinical work with sexuality, trauma, and intimate relationships.
Who This Event Is For
This event is geared toward clinicians interested in psychoanalysis, sexuality, trauma, and relational treatment, particularly those looking for a deeper framework for understanding sexual symptoms in clinical work. This is also consistent with Psychoanalytic Inquiry’s Decentralized Learning Experiences format, which is open to licensed clinicians.
Participants Will Leave With
A psychoanalytic framework for understanding sexual symptoms as emotional communication, greater awareness of how attachment and trauma shape erotic experience, and clinical guidance for working beyond insight alone toward embodied and relational change.
Registration
Registration is through Psychoanalytic Inquiry, linked below.
VIRTUAL: Beyond Betrayal: Five Psychological Types of Affairs and What Each Requires for HealingSexual Health Alliance (SHA) – Advanced Practitioner Summit
Affairs are often treated as a single clinical category, yet the psychological meaning, relational function, and treatment needs of infidelity vary widely. In this advanced practitioner training, Juliane Maxwald, LP, CST explores five distinct psychological types of affairs and the specific therapeutic approaches each requires for healing and repair.
Drawing from psychoanalytic, relational, and trauma-informed frameworks, this training examines infidelity as an attachment injury, a nervous system rupture, and frequently a reenactment of earlier relational trauma. Participants will learn how to move beyond surface-level interventions toward a more precise, depth-oriented understanding of betrayal and recovery.
This is a clinical, educational training designed for professionals and is not a podcast or interview.
Who This Training Is For
This event is intended for therapists, sex therapists, relationship clinicians, and mental health professionals working with couples, sexual trauma, infidelity, and relational rupture.
Why This Training Matters
Effective work with betrayal requires more than behavioral repair or insight alone. Understanding the psychological function of an affair allows clinicians to tailor treatment, avoid premature reconciliation or moralizing frameworks, and support genuine relational repair when possible.
Registration
Registration is through the Sexual Health Alliance.
More details and registration information available on the SHA website.
In-Person Book Launch: Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: REGISTRATION CLOSED | EVENT IS AT CAPACITY
In this presentation, Juliane Maxwald, LP, will discuss her book Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality (Routledge, 2025) and the integrative journey that shaped it. Tracing her path from training at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies through her work in couples therapy, sex therapy, and trauma, Juliane reflects on how modern analysis laid the groundwork for understanding unconscious communication through the body.
She explores how core psychoanalytic ideas—preverbal communication, countertransference, aggression, and managing levels of stimulation—intersect with contemporary trauma theory and embodied sex therapy. The talk weaves together theory and lived experience, illustrating how returning to the foundations of modern analysis with new eyes can deepen our understanding of desire, regulation, and relational life.
Sex, Shame & the Unconscious: A Book Talk with Juliane Maxwald
An intimate conversation with Juliane Maxwald about desire, shame, attachment, and the unconscious dimensions of sexual life.
Join us to celebrate the publication of Juliane Maxwald’s Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality.
Framed as an intimate dialogue with the author, this one-hour book talk will explore how sexual symptoms—low desire, intimacy struggles, compulsive behavior, or disruptions in arousal—often reflect deeper layers of attachment, trauma, and unconscious conflict. Juliane will discuss how psychoanalysis and modern sex therapy can be integrated in practice, how shame silently shapes erotic life, and how clinicians can work at the intersection of mind, body, and relational experience.
Drawing from powerful clinical narratives and contemporary theory, Juliane will invite participants into a nuanced conversation about the emotional meanings behind sexual challenges.
As Ian Kerner writes, “Juliane Maxwald…puts sex therapy back on the couch and shows us that everything old is new again.”
Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality — Book Launch Event
This virtual book talk marked the release of Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality. In conversation with ICP, author and psychologist Juliane discusses the emotional meanings embedded in sexual symptoms, the unconscious layers of desire and inhibition, and how clinicians can integrate psychoanalytic thinking with contemporary sex therapy frameworks. We will explore themes of shame, attachment, trauma, and the relational dynamics that shape sexual experience.