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.