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Juliane Maxwald, "Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:07]
B
Welcome back to the New Books Network. Our guest for the episode is Julianne Maxwald. Julianne Maxwald is a licensed psychoanalyst, couples therapist and ASEC certified sex therapist based in New York City. She has over 15 years of experience working with individuals and couples across a wide range of concerns, including sexuality and intimacy, trauma, addiction and compulsive behaviors, mood and anxiety disorders, and relational and family of origin dynamics. Julianne teaches, supervises and consults nationally across psychoanalytic, trauma and sex therapy communities. Her work is grounded in contemporary psychoanalysis and informed by trauma theory, somatic awareness and relational sex positive frameworks. She specializes in helping people move beyond symptom focused treatment, whether the symptom shows up as sexual difficulty, burnout, overwork, emotional numbing or relational conflict, and toward a deeper understanding of the unconscious patterns shaping their lives. She joins us today to talk about her new and brand new book, Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality, published December 2025 by Routledge Guyan. Welcome to the podcast.
- [02:32]
C
Thank you so much. It's so nice to be here.
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B
Yeah. So, since this is an analytic podcast, we begin each episode with a question. As far as we can know our own motivations, what motivated you to write the book?
- [02:46]
C
It's a great question and it right there's Multiple levels of this. But my conscious answer to this question is it really was born out of my experience having one foot always in the world of psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytic community, and having another foot in the world of couples therapy and sex therapy in particular. And I found myself kind of translating first to myself the different perspectives and approaches and language that I was hearing and communicating with. And then it. And then really expanding to where I was translating for these two communities when I was supervising or teaching in the sex therapy world, really wanting to bring in the language of psychoanalysis and the unconscious. And then also, as I was running workshops or teaching in the psychoanalytic world, noticing that people really were becoming more and more interested in sex therapy or the issue showing up in treatment around sex and sexuality with individuals and couples. And so, for me, this was a bridging of these two worlds, so to speak.
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B
And what so for I'm only in one world, you and I share an initial training in psychoanalysis. Describe the two worlds and what needed to be translated.
- [04:24]
C
Right. So what I have found is that the psychoanalytic world has always been interested and well versed in fantasy and unconscious meaning and relational dynamics, but it doesn't always pay attention to the body. You know, it's a thinking discipline, One could say it doesn't always pay as much attention to the body, whereas sex therapy is really steeped in technique and behavior and physiology, but it doesn't always embody as much depth as psychoanalysis does. And so that's what I was finding. And both of those perspectives I find incredibly useful. And then to sort of add a third layer into this, I was doing a lot of work related to trauma or trauma, kind of informed work with people and bringing in a somatic awareness, a real focus on the sensations of the body and the nervous system. And nervous system regulation also was a layer that got added into this kind of clinical stance that I feel integrates and incorporates these three different perspectives. And what I really wanted to do with the book, and what I like a lot mostly about the book, is that I really wanted to make it full of case examples so that it felt really accessible, so that people, therapists, in particular clinicians, could read it and see kind of the roadmap of how to integrate these different things or how these different perspectives could really come alive in a case.
- [06:24]
B
Well, the case material, as written in the book, is extraordinary, humbling. I mean, as a reader, I'm grateful to you for writing it. You must be enormously grateful for the people who brought their material to you. And it brings me into so many different dynamics which we'll get into in the book. So with the three different worlds, the somatic, the sex therapy, physiology, psychoanalysis, are they willing to talk to each other? Are analysts willing to talk to sex therapists, and vice versa. Has there been any resistance?
- [07:05]
C
I don't think so. Maybe it's just the people I'm talking to, I don't know, talking with. But I think that there's a real interest in interdisciplinary perspectives, or at least people. People who are open to curiosity, which I think, you know, certainly most psychoanalysts are. And I. And I think there's also a real eagerness on the part of sex therapists to have more of an understanding of unconscious dynamics. There's nothing more frustrating when you're trying to help somebody with a sexual problem or issue or difficulty and you run into resistance or stuckness or the. The interventions and the techniques that you're offering just fall flat. And so what psychoanalysis really does is it opens up this world of unconscious communication and unconscious meaning. And the idea. There's so many ideas embedded there that are useful to somebody who might otherwise just approach therapy or treatment through a behavioral, or even a cognitive behavioral lens. So.
- [08:24]
B
Yes. So one of the things that you and I've talked about, I think briefly just in. In the run up to the book, but also something that was noticed, I don't know how long ago, you know, Freud, the. This whole. Our whole discipline, the analytic discipline, begins with sexuality and Freud's three essays. But at some point, sexuality dropped out of the analytic discourse. I think it was Daniel Nafo in this program is like, it's. It's not in there. It's not in the literature. We're good with aggression. That really showed up, but sexuality went away. Did you notice that in your. In your analytic work or in your research of the literature? Where did sexuality go?
- [09:09]
C
Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. It's a really wonderful question, and I don't really know how to answer it other than I know my own personal experience. You and I both trained in modern analysis, which I love, and has been incredibly. I mean, it's. It's really the foundation of how I work and the emphasis on aggression and how that shows up and how to work with it and what it means is. Has been amazing. And what I found when I got into private practice and started seeing and working with a lot of couples which leads into, you know, desire and sexuality and eroticism, there was something. There was something missing for Me, there was. There was more that I needed. And so that's where I started to turn my attention into sex therapy and more couples work and. Everything sort of, you know, from. That's when this whole process for me kind of started happening where I. Where I was really integrating two things, the two different things. But in terms of the psychoanalytic literature, I don't really know where it happened. I don't know where the body kind of dropped off. I mean, psychoanalysis is a practice of the mind. It's a theory of the mind. And so I think it naturally lends itself to that. And what sex is so great at representing in a way or holding in a way, is primitive longings, anxiety, inhibition. I mean, all of these features that we talk about in psychoanalysis, but somehow the actual body kind of got bypassed somewhere.
- [10:59]
B
So I would. I would argue drop. Because studies in hysteria was the study of conversion disorder. We knew. We knew that we had to look at something, or Freud did. I wasn't there. Had to look at something because of what was happening in the body. Paralysis of limbs, that sort of thing. So the body did get. Did get dropped. Okay, there's so much here I want to talk about. I want. Actually want to start with something because it's. It's more and more in the social discourse, in the psychoanalytic discourse, patients are bringing it up. The pathologizing isn't the right word. Use a better word. But the. The criticism of pornography and the argument is young men aren't having sex because they're involved in pornography. And pornography is now cast as one of the main reasons of lack of libido. It's. It's generally coded as bad, and you do not. Can you talk about pornography and how, in a case example, how it's diagnostic and what do you do with it?
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C
Yes, Yes. I get asked this question all the time about porn and is it bad? And what should I do about my porn use? Or what should I do about my partner's porn use? And my belief is that porn is not inherently good or bad, and it's really not the accurate question to be asking. The real question is, what purpose is it serving in somebody's life? And so there are certainly instances where porn is being used as an avoidant technique as a way to avoid dependency, a way to avoid anxiety, a way to avoid fear and insecurity around performance. There's lots of ways that it can be used avoidantly. I like to look at porn or think of porn in a similar way as one would look at dreams in that there's so much material. If you start to really look at what is the fantasy or what is the theme that's being looked at and why. There's a few cases in the book that talk about porn. But the one that I'm thinking of is a case of somebody that I call Maurice and his. I mean I can sort of describe the case a little bit in detail, please.
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B
Because it's, that's one of the things that's effective about the book is the cases bring the theory to life. So.
- [13:54]
C
Yeah, right. Okay, perfect. So Maurice, the patient that I call Maurice is a chef at a high end restaurant. He has gotten into the habit of going out, you know, after work with, with his co workers and sort of staying out and partying. Coming home very early in the morning to find his girlfriend up, furious. You know, they get into a big fight, he passes out and a few hours later she gets up and goes to work. And you know, this is a pattern that's been repeating and repeating itself and repeating itself. And so he originally comes in saying that he wants to work on his alcohol use and this pattern because he's afraid that it's going to risk his relationship. And so we work on that. And, and in this instance like we really worked on controlling the behavior, like managing like coming up with like, okay, why don't you go out once a week? Can you negotiate this with your partner where you're going to go out once a week and the rest of the time you're going to come home and, and you know, you're not going to drink so much when you go out. And within a couple months things were much, much better in terms of his relationship. And that's when he revealed to me or said to me, there's actually something that I'm more concerned about. There's, there's something that I, I really want to talk to you about that's really concerning with me. And I'll just say as a caveat, I find this often that people will come in to therapy when there is a sexual issue by bringing up, by having a different kind of problem in the beginning as a way to just test out, like, do I trust this person? Am I going to be able to talk about the things that I want to talk about? And so this wasn't that surprising to me. And so what he went on to describe is that he was having more and more difficulty maintaining an erection with his girlfriend. And he was really worried about this. Like first there was a drinking problem and now There was, you know, this problem with his erections, and he was fearful that this relationship was just going to end, that she was going to be. Sasha is what I call. Is the name that I use for her, that she was just going to be done with this relationship. And so we talked a little bit about sex. And. And what I learned was that because he was spending, because he's working more in the late afternoon, in the evening, he had, you know, this block of time in the morning when he was home alone. And they would often. She would often come home a little bit early from work, so they would have some time to overlap. And this is often when they would have sex with each other. And. And so because he was having a little. He was having a little more, you know, difficulty with erections and feeling turned on and really kind of feeling aroused. He would be. He would start watching porn as a way to kind of get him in the mood and turned on. And then he would think about the porn as they were having sex as a way to keep him stimulated. And this worked until it didn't work, and he was having more and more difficulty. And so, you know, at this point, I could have just focused on. On minimizing the porn use or controlling, you know, the behavior. And we did a little bit of that. But more importantly, I got very curious about, well, what kind of pornography are you watching and how often are you watching it? And are you masturbating to orgasm? Are you just masturbating, you know, to. Without orgasm? And what we learned was that there was a very particular theme to the pornography that he was watching. And the theme was a older woman who would seduce a younger man. And in. In he found endless variations of this. You know, there were endless variations, but it was always the same thing. And the dynamic was, you know, the woman who was very much in touch with her desire, who wanted this younger man who took charge. And the younger man sort of had no alternative but to, you know, relinquish control and be taken by this woman. And so as we explored this, as we unpacked this. This, you know, at one point, I floated the idea to him. Well, let me backtrack a little bit. So that was one kind of path of exploration. The other path of exploration was for. Was to talk about what sex with Sasha was like. Like, like, how did they have sex? Who initiated sex? What was it like, what was the sexual script like, who did what? And again, this is something that unless you maybe are specifically trained in sex therapy, you might be a little apprehensive to do because it might, you know, therapists might experience it as being voyeuristic or not really knowing why you would maybe want to do this. But again, there's so much information, not only in pornography and fantasies, but also in. In people's, what we call, like, the sex script, like, what actually is happening. And so what we learned there was that Maurice was this very attentive lover that he was very concerned with making sure that Pasha felt well and really focused on her and made sure that she had an orgasm. And in part, he felt that this was his responsibility or his obligation because she made a lot more money than he did. And it was really based on her income that they. That. That their lifestyle kind of rested on. And so he felt like it was his job, basically, like this was an obligation of his. And so at one point, I sort of floated the idea that his fantasy in the porn that he watched was very different in a way than what sex was like with Sasha. That in. In the porn videos and in the theme, it was very much about him being wanted and him being desired and him not having to perform. And it was really in those moments where he was able to get in touch with a lot of the deeper feelings around the shame that he felt. The fact that he felt like he was underperforming in many areas of his life. He felt like he wasn't really being valued at work and was underpaid at work. He felt like he really wanted to deepen the relationship with Sasha and was thinking about marriage, but, you know, was very nervous that she wouldn't be interested in that, given all of the problems that they were having, also the problems with his. With his erection. And, you know, he was nervous that she was noticing it was getting harder and harder for him to kind of compensate for it. And so this. This really was a kind of turning point where it became very palpable, you know, in. In this one session in particular, where the shame was just kind of filling the room. And he was able to really talk about how. How bad he felt about himself, how insecure he felt about himself, how. How much pressure he was putting on himself to try to get it right, and how relieving, in a way, the pornography was. It was. It was a solution, in a way, an emotional solution to this, to emotions that he didn't necessarily want to confront or deal with directly. And so from there, you know, we were really able then to work somewhat more behaviorally and just talk about, like, okay, well, you know, what do you want to do about your situation at work? Like, what can you do about your situation at work? Can you ask for more money? Can you negotiate, you know, a higher salary? Can you ask for more responsibility? And also, you know, what can you do about the situation with. With Sasha? Can you talk to her about marriage? Can you see where she is in terms of commitment and the relationship? And so he did actually both of those things, and both of them yielded very positive results. It turns out that Sasha really was interested in marriage and was thinking the same thing. And so they came up with a plan, a timeline for engagement. He negotiated a higher salary at work, and both of these things helped him kind of work through the shame and the insecurity and the fear. And so then the next step was to really talk about. And at the same time, he did put some behavioral kind of structure around his porn use. And so he wasn't watching porn every single day. He wasn't having an orgasm in the morning, you know, and then trying to, you know, maintain his erection and have another orgasm in the afternoon. And so that actually did help by putting some of the structure around his pornography. He gave himself similar to as. As he was. As he was drinking. He gave himself one day a week where he would sort of have these luxurious mornings where he would watch pornography. But a lot of his arousal came back, and so sex was starting to work a little bit easier. His erections were starting to be a little more predictable. But then the big step was, would he be willing to tell Sasha about the fantasies that he has? And that really felt like a big step because it really, for him, brought to surface a lot of vulnerability and a lot of fears. But he did, and to his surprise, she was actually very much into the idea of playing around with roleplay, playing around with fantasy. She loved the idea of occupying this role of the older woman who was kind of more dominant and more assertive in her sexuality. And so they had a lot of fun with this, and they experimented with just adding variety to their sex life. It turns out they were both feeling that their sex had become a little predictable and routine and a little stale, so to speak. And so they really embraced adding a lot of novelty and variety to their sex. And they even watched some pornography together. They did this role play thing. She would come home and sort of be the older woman who caught him watching pornography. And they really turned it into something that was a big enhancement, enhancer for their relationship and their sexuality. So that's a kind of condensed arc of the story, but it's a great.
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B
Clinical example of using the content of the pornography, like you said, like a dream, as a way into all the conflict.
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C
Right.
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B
I mean, it's. The clinical application is, for me as an analyst, very clear. This is a dream or treat it like a dream.
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C
Right, right. And if, and, and I think many people, and I don't like to, you know, sort of create this split, but I would say that I think many people in the more sort of traditional sex therapy world might have just gone towards the behavior and tried to figure out, okay, well, what needs to happen sexually? Or how do we, you know, how do we manage the porn use? Or is this, you know, porn addiction? And that, you know, works a little bit in terms of controlling behavior, but it doesn't really get to the unconscious, meaning it doesn't really get into the depths of what's going on. And so that's, you know, the value of bringing in the curiosity, the exploration. And I agree, I. I think of sex and sexuality as well as porn and fantasy, similar to dreams. Like everything is in there. If you just are curious and you explore and unpack and ask questions.
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B
Well, you mentioned just now, and it's in the book, whether for yourself or I think in the books, people you supervise the anxiety of. Am I being voyeuristic by asking about that? And I was thinking more about another case where there is an erection problem, the case of John, but you move him towards talking about shame rather than saying just solving it with Viagra. And, you know, part of the training that you and I have is a deep respect for defenses, insulating people. How did you navigate? Say, huh, I need to, in a sense, respect a resistance, maybe reify a resistance. How did you navigate, in a sense, pushing him. That's not your word towards it.
- [28:26]
C
Well, I think you're bringing up like a really great point which is, and particularly around shame, because I think the natural tendency or a tendency for some therapists is to want to make people feel better. You know, it's. Nobody wants to hear about shame per se, unless you're trained to really tolerate, you know, uncomfortable, difficult feelings. Because what happens. And as psychoanalysts, I think we know this, if you take away the defense too quickly, either another one will pop up or there's going to be, you know, an unraveling. That's not helpful. You, you can't. You can't. The, the defense is there for a reason. It serves a function. So trying to understand what that function is and actually supporting the defense until it feels more natural to shed that skin or to, you know, give that defense up. That's where so many people, particularly, I think, in sex therapy get stuck. That's when you might be able to interpret something or point something out or help somebody correct a problem, only to find that it doesn't actually work. And so the idea, you know, that we learn in psychoanalysis is to respect the resistance. You know, to explore the resistance, to understand the resistance to. To. To understand what the function is, is the only way to support the process of eventually giving that resistance up. And this, I mean, if I can. This is actually where for me, trauma therapy comes in, in this very interesting way, particularly around sex and sexuality. Because what trauma does so well is that it understands that many symptoms live in the body and they're formed in a. In the preedible phase of development and early infantile development. And unless you get below language and into affect and into body and, you know, in terms of trauma, it's really just about regulating. Not just. But it's about regulating the nervous system. You will just continually loop, Stay in the loop of language without really ever getting deep enough to help people make real structural change in their sexuality or their nervous system. And so it's been super interesting for me to see the similarities between certainly like our training, which focused heavily on pre Oedipal or pre. Verbal material, and what's happening in the world of trauma, which is so much, you know, so much language that the trauma world is using is talking about pre verbal affect and how trauma stored in the body and how the nervous system, you know, how it's. It's all pre. Verbal. So that. That to me is fascinating. And that's kind of the somatic piece that. That I kind of bring in as well.
- [31:56]
B
Right. And so that goes back to the body. And in fact, at our conference, 2004, it was the Andre Green conference. And Andre Green says that what keeps him with Freud is he says Freud never abandons the body. I want to. When you talk, because we're talking about resistance, and I'm going to take a phrase from your book, Embodied Resistance, I want you to talk us about what you see in masturbation, because I think the title is called Sexual Healing, Masturbation, Trauma and the Body's Wisdom. And you write masturbation as an act of embodied resistance, emotional processing and integration, rather than merely a behavioral habit or private indulgence. So for you, what is masturbation or what can it be? I guess.
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C
Yeah, well, this, in that particular case, it's the case of Connie. Connie, yeah. Yeah. And this is actually one of my favorite cases in the book. And it was really rewarding working with this woman. Um, I mean, masturbation can. Can mean and be and symbolize so many different things for so many different people. But in this particular case, masturbation really became a site or an experience of something that was certainly not coded in language. And so a little bit about this case of Connie. So she is an art therapist who came, who has a very extensive history of sexual abuse, who had been in therapy for probably two decades. You know, when she came to me and really felt like she had worked through the sexual abuse and the trauma and was in a really good place in her life, she was happy at work, happy in her relationship. Felt like she had a good relationship to her body and her sexuality. But she came with a very specific Ask a very specific reason, and that was she wanted to talk about. To tell somebody about a masturbation practice that had been with her for, you know, decades since adolescent. Not actually adolescent, since her early 20s, in which she had a very visceral, animalistic, like, response to this masturbation practice where she would make these kind of wild noises, these grunts. She described it as like, pushing something out of her body. It was very visceral. The actual practice was that she would take a vibrator and put it on its highest setting and put it right on her clitoris. And, you know, and. And it was pleasure, but there was also pain involved. It was almost like a real experience of tolerating pain that was also pleasurable and drawing out, like, these very intense sounds. She described it as animalistic and, you know, said, like, I would be mortified if anybod ever, like, saw or heard me do this. Like, this is something that she never did in partnered sex. She never shared with anyone. And for many years, she didn't even really think about it. It was just something that she did. And oftentimes the. So the orgasm was very intense, very fast. And then most often, she would just let out, like, a lot of tears. There'd be crying that happened afterwards. And this was just something she did. Like I said, she didn't really think about it at all. And then over time, she began to get a little curious about it. She just. She noticed that her and her. Her partner would sometimes masturbate together. That was part of what they did sexually. On occasion, they would just masturbate with each other. And she noticed, oh, okay. My masturbation with my partner is very different than what I do in private, in isolation. And that's when she started to get curious about it and interested in. About it. And so she came really with the desire to just speak about this, to just share it with somebody. She didn't want to change it. She didn't think there was a problem with it. She didn't really need anything from me, except that she needed a space where she could put words to this experience and have somebody witness it with her. Not the actual masturbation, but the. The naming of it, the describing of it. And in her mind. And she knew it was related to her trauma. She knew that there were remnants of it that had to do with her trauma. But in her mind, being able to bring language to this experience, to put words to what otherwise was just a very intense, very raw, very visceral bodily experience, helped her reach a different. A deeper sense of embodiment and empowerment in a way over her own relationship to her body and relationship to her history. Um, and so it was, you know, she was in analysis with me for about nine months, and then that was really it. Like she came in for a very specific thing, and it really was to put language to something where language had never existed before. And I think that's just incredibly powerful.
- [38:00]
B
Well, as is nine months.
- [38:03]
C
Yes. I hadn't actually even thought of that. Thank you for that. That's amazing. Absolutely. I can't remember if I. If I mentioned that she likened this experience her masturbation practice. She said the. The thing it reminds me most of is when I was in labor and having contractions and giving birth to my child. And so it's interesting that you point out the nine months. Yeah.
- [38:35]
B
And then she was born.
- [38:36]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the power, in a way of. Of not rushing too quickly to interpretation and letting, you know, affect. Letting affect exist and come to the surface. One idea that I don't really talk of that much about in the book, but it was really through writing the book that it helped me crystallize. An idea that I really want to think about and develop more is the idea of sexual symptoms as a narcissistic transference to the body.
- [39:17]
B
Oh, well, let's do that now.
- [39:19]
C
Okay.
- [39:20]
B
What's your. What's your idea? We know because one. There's one chapter where you tie in Ogden and Spotnitz and somebody else. So what is your. What's your idea of narcissistic transference to the body?
- [39:31]
C
Well, I think that there's. I think that there. There is a way that sexual symptoms are. Can be looked at through the lens of being a narcissistic transference to the body in that they can be self regulating, they can encapsulate longing, fear, dependency, inhibition. Like there's so much dynamically that can happen through, you know, what we would otherwise see as a sexual symptom. And understanding it through that lens, for me anyway, just gets really interesting in terms of thinking about the function that sexual symptoms represent. Do you have any. What are your thoughts? Do you have any thoughts?
- [40:32]
B
No, because I'm thinking it right now for the first time.
- [40:35]
C
Yeah.
- [40:36]
B
No, you are way ahead of me.
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C
That's my thought. Yeah. Well, related, you know, related to it in a way is the idea that in the pre. Verbal state, the mind and the body. The mind is in the body. Right. Like there's no psyche before Soma. Like they're the same. And so to me, this whole sort of portal around sexuality and. And the collapse in a way of mind and body lives right there. It has the potential to live in the realm of sex and sexuality. And again, it's just an idea that kind of emerged from writing the book that I know I want to think about and write more about and conceptualize because I think there's a lot there.
- [41:30]
B
Yeah. So then I'm going to use what you just said for a hard pivot because I want to come back into the book with the body. Something that is new to me. It's not new, but it's new to me. Over the past, I'd say 15 years and I've worked with couples involved in consensual non monogamy. And you title it. It's more than the agreement. You write Love, Loss, Boundaries and consensual non monogamy. How do you reframe it in a psychoanalytic context? Because as I think you write, historically, psychoanalysis pathologized non monogamy as a defense against intimacy or narcissistic disturbance. So I think that's true. How do you see it, contextualize it? And when people say that they want to work on that, what are they working on? Are they asking for?
- [42:31]
C
I. And again, I think that there are so many variations around non monogamy and the way it shows up in people's relationship and the function that it served. You know, and I'll also just preface this. I mean, I have an addendum to this book that is titled Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar.
- [42:55]
B
Yes, well, I picked up on that. And in fact, you said this maybe comes to the narcissist point. If we said in this conversation that people who are Looking primarily at behavior need to be helped to consider unconscious process. But then you talked about, for us, the psychoanalyst and our narcissistic need to see complexity where there may not be any.
- [43:20]
C
Right, right, right. And so, you know, part of me wants to just highlight the fact that there might be a lot of ways to look at depth with sex and sexuality, which is wonderful. And it really, I think, is a portal into all of these deeper layers. And sex sometimes, you know, and it doesn't have to be. It can also just be about preference. And as long as you're engaging in consensual sexual, you know, with a partner or partners, you know, who are on board and in agreement and everybody's experiencing pleasure, if pleasure is, you know, the goal, then it's fine and it can be as simple as that. So, you know, I'll put that out there. But what I have found, or the way that I like to think about consensual non monogamy for some people is that. Well, maybe not even for some people, but I love the idea that Adrian Harris talks about that sex and sexuality can represent different self. State of a person.
- [44:33]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [44:35]
C
And that it isn't fixed necessarily. Like the person we are in our fantasy might be the person, a different person than who we are when we're masturbating, who might be a different person, you know, with a partner or you know, that their sex has the ability to allow for multiple different self states to happen. Sometimes, you know, singularly in a diff. In a specific sexual act or event, but sometimes within one sexual act, you become, you know, multiple different people are occupying multiple different roles. And I love that. I think that's amazing. And I think in part that can happen in non monogamy that people, for whatever reason, we can, you know, there's lots of reasons why potentially, but that for some people needing to have different experiences to meet a need or to play out a dynamic or to experience something in their body, have been given permission to play that out in a way that's becoming more and more socially acceptable. I mean, I have so many clients who are patients who are experimenting with non monogamy. And one could also say that it can be used also as a way to avoid deeper intimacy or vulnerability or exposure. And so it really is, you know, of both. And there are many different ways that all of these things can function in an individual or in a couple, for example. But. But that Adrian Harris's idea of the multiplicity of self, particularly in sex and sexuality, I think is really interesting and very applicable to non monogamy.
- [46:42]
B
Yeah. And I found the passage where you write about that is. I think that. I think it's true in the specific, what we're talking about with sexuality, but I think it's true as a therapeutic aim, for lack of a better term. You write, the therapeutic task isn't unifying the self into a cohesive whole, but creating conditions where dissociated states can coexist, be held in language and eventually regulated. The self state that knows we're at the end of the session is here. Anything before we sign off, anything that we didn't cover or that you would like the listener to know about the book?
- [47:23]
C
I mean, this was a wonderful conversation. It's great to talk to you, Christopher and I, I love, I love, you know, my. I write in the book, my first love has always been psychoanalysis because I love just the way that in psychoanalysis you can. One can wonder, wander and wonder and arrive at really interesting, you know, places. And so this has been a wonderful conversation. I don't. There's nothing that's coming to my mind that, you know, I really want to convey. I think we did a great job. And really, I mean, I think for me, the heart of this book is really about unconscious communication. And can we listen to it and can we respect it? Can we appreciate the, the role that it has not only in sexuality, but in life in general?
- [48:16]
B
We have been talking with Julianne Maxwell about her new book, Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality, published 2025 by Routledge. Julianne, thank you for joining me.
- [48:29]
C
This has been wonderful. Thank you. I appreciate.