Constructing the Sexual Crucible: An Integration of Sexual and Marital Therapy Book

Ground-breaking look into sexual dysfunction as an emotional intimacy matter, of the self-differentiation of the dyadic partners. The insightful and detailed opus demonstrated a shift away from over-assigning such dysfunction to somatic causation and treatment with pharmaceutical drugs, or other means.

Very important is this book is not about simply the act of sex. Schnarch wisely treats how sexuality is often a defense against intimacy. Likewise, such intimacy ineptness eventually causes sexual problems in a dyad, if a person remains committed long enough that the sexual act opens beyond having sex to sharing sex as emotional-spiritual intimacy with other and self.

The author provides theory and, also, examples of casework in assisting couples to enlarge the range of freedom in sexual expression within the dyad. The author empowers each person, by the self of either choosing this expansion for himself or herself, and not waiting for common agreement in this matter. Each partner, for self-differentiatian, necessarily must make the choice for self, not merely or mainly to please the other. Each partner is responsible for his or her sexual enjoyment. This serves to encourage mutuality in the expansion both of emotional and sexual maturation.

This work was used as a textbook in my counseling training in medical school, and is not a light read, yet a helpful work to explore sexuality as an expression of emotional, even according to the author, spiritual intimacy. He does not differentiate the two. The latter the author supports by reference to the highly sexualized within Hinduism.

Of import in this book's orientation, however, is absence of a negation that at times sexual dysfunction may be somatically based, so more than a symptom.

If one is not comfortable with talk about sex, Schnarch might be difficult to read. His style is straight-forward, his language at times coarse. Reading him is itself an education in getting more in touch with the sexual beings we are and the joy of intimacy, via sexual expression and otherwise.