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.