The Sex Therapists: What They Can Do and How They Do It (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior Book 15)

by Lawrence Block

  Now it was good that she was having orgasms, but it wasn’t enough. Ultimately she had to be able to have orgasms with someone. She had to learn not to be afraid of men in general or penises in particular. Remember, this was a girl who did not date anyone, who hardly knew a man. She was not the type men tried to pick up. I found her extremely attractive, but her beauty was not at all the flashy sort. She was a very fragile thing, tiny, small-boned, quiet features. She didn’t look sexy and she didn’t project an aura of availability.

  So where was I going to send her? The singles bars? She’d gone there a few times and they terrified her. Nobody so much as bought her a drink. I couldn’t send her off to a cathouse. Even if that sort of operation existed, it wasn’t what she needed. She had to be with someone who would take it easy with her, someone she already knew and liked as a human being, someone she trusted.

  Obviously, I came to the conclusion that I was just what the doctor ordered. But how do you prescribe yourself? Did I have the right? Would any gesture on my part destroy the whole patient-therapist relationship, undo everything the two of us had thus far accomplished? I went through a lot of soul-searching on these points.

  I also went through a lot of personal frustration. She was on my mind more than any patient should have been. I found myself constructing little fantasies involving her, writing mental scenarios in which I seduced her and she embraced sex with uninhibited joy. Very unprofessional, eh? Well, it’s a tricky business. You’re supposed to be concerned and dispassionate at the same time, you have to walk an emotional high wire and it’s hard to keep your balance all the time. I’m sure it’s no news to you that shrinks have hang-ups just like everybody else. If not more so.

  Let’s forget my mental agonies. I made a variety of decisions—to go ahead, to restrain myself, to explain the problem and suggest she transfer to another therapist—and I went on stalling. Then one day without any advance planning I told her that it was time she was physically intimate with a man.

  She made some self-mocking comment about that being easier said than done and wondered aloud where she could find a man who would want her.

  “There’s one right here in this office who would like nothing more than to make love to you,” I said.

  At first she thought I had some stud closeted in another room waiting for her. Then our eyes locked and she got the message. She was quite shocked.

  I went over to her and took her hand. I told her I thought it would be good for her if we made love, but that this was not my only motive, that I actively desired to make love to her. I confessed that I didn’t know for certain whether this was a legitimate therapeutic technique, that it might do her more harm than good but that my instinctive feeling was that it would be good for her. I made a point of saying that I wasn’t in love with her although I had a great deal of feeling for her, and that we could not have an affair as such.

  Her hour was only half gone but I dismissed her early. I told her to take a week to think about it and come in next week at her usual time. I emphasized that she had several options, that she could decide she did not want to be intimate with me but could remain my patient, that I could refer her to another psychiatrist, but that in any event I hoped she would not make the mistake of terminating therapy altogether.

  She came back a week later and told me she had spent the better portion of the week trying to get laid. That she had gone to singles bars and likely pickup places and invariably froze if a man even seemed likely to approach her. That she had gone on masturbating, and that I had played a key role in her fantasies. She also confessed that I had been a frequent actor in her fantasies previously as well.

  And that she wanted me to make love to her.

  The first day we didn’t get any further than a combination of light petting and sensory awareness, kissing and touching each other. Afterward I juggled my appointments schedule and arranged to see her at her usual time five days a week instead of once a week, but told her that she would still only pay for one session.

  Our affair, for lack of a better word, progressed just as I would have hoped a sexual relationship with another man would have progressed for her. Essentially I designed a sexual surrogate program for her and played the surrogate role myself. We spent a few days letting her get used to being comfortable with the male body. By the third or fourth day I was petting her to orgasm. On the fifth day we had intercourse, and she was able to enjoy it although she did not have an orgasm. The effects of the rape (or imagined rape) seemed to have vanished. Penetration held no fear for her.

  My own feelings during all of this were very strange. I was playing the role of the almost dispassionate sexual partner, and trying to conceal the fact that she actually excited me almost beyond endurance. The role I was cast in was a heady combination of benevolent doctor and cold-blooded seducer, and it was to say the least an exhilarating experience. I had worried, during my spate of soul-searching, that I might prove impotent, which would be the worst possible thing for the poor girl’s ego. As it turned out, I was almost too potent. I had a yen for her that was as urgent as anything I’ve ever experienced. Every morning for two weeks I would be sitting around with a painful erection for the two hours before her arrival, and each time when she walked through the door I ached to rip her clothes off and throw her down on the floor. And all the while I was giving the impression of infinite patience—it was all very thrilling for me.

  For two weeks she came in daily and we had sex. The pattern during the second week was fairly consistent throughout. She would come in, we would make a very urgent sort of love, then she would talk both about what we had done and what had been on her mind during the past twenty-three hours, and then we would make love again. She proved to be an excellent sexual partner and we became highly attuned to each other.

  After ten days of this, I told her that we would have to return to the schedule of once-a-week sessions, that she had completely conquered her problem of frigidity and it was now necessary that we avoid her becoming personally dependent upon me. (What I also felt, but did not say, was that I was at least as concerned that I might become overly dependent upon her.) I would continue to see her once a week, and in the intervals she should begin to let her own social life develop, as she no longer had reason to fear the possibility of sexual confrontation.

  During the next two months I saw her one day a week, and the sexual bond between us began to cool off. She very definitely had come out of her cocoon as a result of having enjoyed a satisfying sexual relationship, and she gave off an aura of confidence and competence that made her far more attractive to men. She dated several men, had sexual relations with two of them, and after approximately two months I told her that she could terminate therapy, that she did not need to come to see me any more.

  • • •

  JWW: Bennett’s first experience as a “lay analyst” had results which he increasingly came to regard as ideal. While he remained concerned about the ethics of what he had done, and appreciated the potential for disaster of sexual involvement with patients, he became convinced that no alternative therapeutic method could have had such a beneficial effect upon his patient. Thus considerably less rationalization was required when similar situations came up later on, and he found himself acting in a considerably less candid fashion with another patient.

  • • •

  BENNETT: For a variety of reasons, I was determined that it was desirable for me to have sexual relations with Brenda. She reminded me in certain ways of the first patient I had had sex with, although they were quite dissimilar. In Brenda’s case, the physical attraction on my part was not nearly so demanding. I did find her very attractive but not to the point where I was desperate to make love to her. I believed then and believe now that my decision to seduce her was based primarily on altruistic motives. I felt it would be for her own good.

  Briefly stated, her problem was what the profession used to call nymphomania. She had very strong sexual desires but did not reach orgasm excep
t through masturbation, and her masturbatory orgasms were more frustrating than non-orgasmic intercourse.

  She was very aggressive sexually. She always initiated sexual contact. Thus she was extremely promiscuous but impossible to seduce; it had to be her idea. She would select a man and make a play for him, and I gather she was as good as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police when it came to getting her man.

  She was terribly afraid of being exploited by a man. Her father had evidently dominated her mother to an appalling degree—or what she perceived as an appalling degree—and she was determined to avoid that fate herself. There was the usual ambivalence in her feelings toward her parents. She hated her father, resented him for his treatment of her mother, yet simultaneously regarded him as the ideal male. To state it as simply as possible, her sexual behavior represented a symbolic desire to fuck her father without being fucked by him. Thus her inability to acquiesce to male domination even to the point of permitting herself to have an orgasm when there was a penis in her vagina.

  There was no question of her not having adequate opportunity for intercourse, as in the earlier case. Brenda’s sex life remained very active during therapy, and showed no changes of either a qualitative or quantitative nature. She still went out and got her man, she still was unable to let him get to her, and she still hated him when it was over and did not want to have relations with the same individual more than once.

  I felt it was necessary for her to have a relationship which deviated from this pattern, a relationship in which she could not have the opportunity to play the dominant role. Again, I elected myself.

  If I had merely desired to have sex with this girl, all I would have had to do was accept her offer. She had behaved seductively toward me from the beginning, and boasted of having had sex with another therapist several years before. I made it very clear at the time that I wasn’t having any, and after a few more half-serious attempts at seducing me, she gave it up. Had I taken her on her terms, I would not only have destroyed my own therapeutic usefulness but would have reinforced precisely that pattern which I wanted to interrupt.

  One day she was discussing her experiences with masturbation. I told her I found her description of “empty, dry masturbatory climaxes” puzzling (although in fact I knew very well what she was talking about) and suggested that she give me some nonverbal evidence of what she meant. I hold her very matter-of-factly to take off her clothes and masturbate right there in my office. She responded with some flirtatious banter which I ignored. Then she expressed doubts that she would be able to masturbate with another person present. I told her that if she was able to talk about it so freely she certainly ought to be able to do it, whereupon she raised her skirt, removed her underwear, and commenced manipulating herself.

  Not too surprisingly, my presence had an inhibiting effect and she was unable to become excited. I put her in a light hypnotic trance and suggested that she would be able to become excited. I also suggested that the orgasm she reached would be more satisfying than usual, which proved to be the case.

  We then established a pattern whereby she would masturbate each time in my presence after having been first lightly conditioned by hypnosis. I found all of this quite exciting, incidentally, although I was careful to avoid any suspicion on her part that my interest was other than purely clinical.

  She gradually reached a point where she unconsciously connected the process of hypnosis—and the domination implicit in it—with sexual excitement and satisfaction. At this point it was child’s play to inaugurate a sexual relationship. I simply began touching and caressing her one day while she was already in the act of exciting herself, explaining that this would teach her to accept male attention while in a state of sexual excitement (which was true enough). On various occasions I had her masturbate and fellate me while she handled herself. Eventually I began having intercourse with her, and although her acceptance was not immediate, it was not long before she found herself having orgasms in coitus.

  Sexual relations with Brenda were not a regular thing as they were in the first instance. In line with establishing a role relationship in which she was submissive while I was dominant, I so structured things that we did or did not have sex at my whim.

  All of this would probably have been extremely dangerous if Brenda were not having an active sex life of her own. The fact that she was, added to the fact that I did seem quite disinterested, made it easy for her to avoid forming too strong an attachment to me. On the positive side, the responses she learned with me carried over bit by bit into her other sexual relationships. She felt less threatened with men and gradually became able to respond with others as she had learned to respond with me. As her sexual relations became orgasmic, she lost the need to behave promiscuously, as I had anticipated would be the case.

  • • •

  JWW: One wonders just how valid this sort of therapy may be. Bennett can make a very good case for it, although after doing so he will qualify his arguments by admitting that he is not all that certain of their validity. I suspect that sexual therapy along these lines may sometimes be indicated, and that it sometimes may be successful.

  But there are far too many members of the profession who lack the necessary objectivity and competence, far too many who would be quick to use the concept of sexual therapy as a convenient means of rationalizing the pure and simple desire for sexual conquest. The potential for disaster would thus appear to be enormous, and my own inclination would be to dismiss this personal sexual therapy on the therapist’s part as generally unsound.

  A Good Excuse for an Orgy

  The encounter group is a phenomenon of the late sixties that was widely embraced upon its inception as a vehicle for instant psychotherapy. The premise of the encounter group, in essence, is that a collection of strangers operating in an intensive form of group therapy over an extended period of time may act upon one another in such a way as to facilitate significant breakthroughs which could otherwise only be achieved by months or years of more conventional therapy.

  These groups have taken an infinite variety of forms and have held appeal for as great a variety of persons. Quite a few corporations arranged for key employees to attend groups designed to improve their emotional outlook and increase their self-awareness. Many neurotics saw the encounter marathon as a valuable shortcut to what they had thus far been unable to achieve via conventional therapy. Encounter groups have also drawn a significant number of persons who employ them periodically as a sort of emotional high colonic, a means of achieving a temporary catharsis; such individuals participate in marathon after marathon, playing in them as in any game situation.

  In the past year or so, there has been a rather severe backlash. Persons in the field have become increasingly aware that what was at worst regarded as a psychic cocktail can be more like nitroglycerine than alcohol, with an unpredictable potential for explosive results. The most obvious danger—that an encounter can trigger nervous breakdowns in unstable individuals—seems to be the least of it. A far more insidious danger lies in the possibility that a person may experience an enormous emotional breakthrough (which of course is the whole idea) and will subsequently prove incapable of handling that breakthrough. The exhilaration of the experience is followed in a day or a week or a month by the unhappy realization that, breakthrough or no breakthrough, one is still the same person and one’s problems are still the same problems, and what appeared to be the light at the end of the tunnel was merely a mirage.

  The result of this realization is apt to be depression, often suicidal in scope. This particular pattern is a known hazard in psychotherapy in general, but in conventional ongoing courses of therapy the patient has at least minimal safeguards. He sees the therapist on a regular basis, and the therapist is presumably competent to identify signs of such depression and deal with them as they manifest themselves. In addition, the therapist is available to the patient in times of stress.

  This is not the case with the great majority of encounter groups.
Once the marathon is over, once the emotional merry-go-round grinds to a halt, the participants are very much on their own. There is generally no follow-up by the person or persons running the operation, nor are they apt to be accessible to participants should they be needed. Some observers have detected a definite syndrome in which a person attends an encounter marathon, experiences enormous exhilaration and the sense that a whole new life has opened up for him—and, within a month or so, commits suicide. It is of course impossible to say how often this happens, but it is widely recognized as a genuine hazard of this form of therapy.

  Another serious problem with encounter groups is that there is no guarantee whatsoever of emotional stability, let alone professional competence, on the part of the person running the show. Anyone in the world can run an encounter group simply by doing so, and an unsettling number of group leaders have no qualifications whatsoever beyond the fact that they have previously participated in other groups themselves. Those who have what they regard as positive results from attending marathons often become quite messianic about the whole thing and begin running groups of their own, and it is hardly surprising that they are utterly unequipped to identify dangerous psychoses, cope with undesirable results, or otherwise ensure against the group’s having destructive effects upon some or all of its members.

  In my own personal experience, I have a woman friend whom I’ve known for several years. She has organized and directed encounter sessions on several occasions, and has no qualifications whatsoever for so doing, unless one is inclined to count a freshman level psych course in college. In addition, her personal emotional stability is such that she really should not be permitted to walk around without a leash. That she is responsible for directing others in an emotionally charged situation is something I find quite terrifying.

  This prelude to a discussion of some sexually-oriented encounter groups should not be taken as a blanket condemnation of a psychotherapeutic vehicle. It is to be expected that encounter group techniques will go through considerable refinement in the future, and that some sort of control will be established in order to guarantee against unsuitable and unqualified group leaders.