8:00 AM -7:30 PM Registration open

9:00-5:30 PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS – 7 Hours of Clinical Training

Workshop A:  RAISING LIBIDO: Body-Awareness Methods for Enhancing Sexual Arousal
9:00-12:00 Stella Resnick, Ph.D.
     This workshop offers a comprehensive body-oriented approach for enhancing sexual arousal in clients with this issue. Several methods, including breath awareness, Gestalt processing, and role-playing, will be explored which can be utilized during the therapy session to help clients have a direct experience of how unresolved emotions can block sexual enthusiasm and how to work them through in therapy. Other methods can be recommended for homework to help clients shift from performance goals to enhancing their experience. These methods include breath control, relaxation exercises, moment-to-moment self-observation, mental imagery, sensual awareness, and skillful sexual expression.
Learning Objectives
1. To identify the physical stress patterns associated with the various emotions that can interfere with sexual arousal.
2. To learn how to utilize several methods during therapy sessions that can heighten clients’ awareness of these stress patterns and help them to resolve the issues and release the emotional blocks.
3. To explore several homework assignments that can help clients build sexual arousal skills.

Workshop B: TX. FOR TWO: Some Basic Perspectives and Skills for Couple Therapy
1:15-3:15 Linda Perlin Alperstein, M.S.W., L.C.S.W.
        Many of us have learned a variety of techniques with which we can address sexual problems. Although trained as sex therapists, we often lack the concepts and skills necessary for our interactions with a couple. Working with couples is a growing science and art form in and of itself. It requires special training and is challenging, even to experienced therapists. As this author and the geometric principle say, the couple is greater (and more complex) than the sum of the parts. This workshop is designed as an introduction to some general principles and specific techniques of couple therapy. We will discuss ideas for conducting a first session and consider perspectives for clients that can help them understand and utilize their therapy more effectively. Together, we will think about some of the reasons why our perfectly brilliant interventions and homework suggestions sometimes fail.
Learning Objectives
1. To learn basic guidelines for the therapist’s responsibility for and alliance with the couple.
2. To assess couple dynamics and difficulties that might interfere with the progress of sex therapy.
3. To be aware of common pitfalls in managing a balanced relationship with both members of the couple.

Workshop C: Intimacy-Focused Surrogate Partner Therapy
3:30-5:30 Vena Blanchard, President, International Professional Surrogates Association (IPSA), Martin McCombs, Ph.D.
 Surrogate Partner Therapy (SPT) is a highly effective, multi-dimensional adjunctive treatment for clients with a variety of sexual and relationship difficulties.  This workshop provides participants with a multi-dimensional understanding of the principles and process of SPT and prepares therapists to supervise SPT cases. Drawing on three decades of SPT experience this workshop uses case studies, lectures, video, and optional experientials to develop participants understanding of supervising therapists’ role, the dynamics of therapeutic triads, the structure intimacy-focussed surrogate-client relationships. Every surrogate-client interaction is simultaneously diagnostic, skill building, developmentally challenging, and potentially transformative. Every aspect of the therapeutic process is designed to build the clients’ capacity for satisfying relationship and sexuality. It is the intricate interweaving of these various aspects of therapy and relationship that make surrogate partner therapy so effective and also so challenging to understand. Because it focusses on the transformational power of clinical relationships this workshop has relevance for clinicians of all backgrounds.
Learning Objectives
1. To understand the basic principles and processes of surrogate partner therapy.
2. To identify 3 types of clients for whom SPT is appropriate and 3 types of clients for whom SPT is not appropriate.
3. To be able to identify and understand common clinical challenges within SPT.

7:15 PM Welcome
  Carol Rinkleib Ellison, Ph.D., President, Western Region SSSS
  Michael Ross, Ph.D., President, SSSS
  David Fleming, M.A., Executive Director, SSSS
  David Hall, Ph.D., Program Chair

7:30 PM Issues in Sexual Desire
  Sandra Leiblum, Ph.D.
8:30 PM Teen Sexual Desire: Just a Hunka Hunka of Burning Love?
  Carol Cassell, Ph.D.

9:30-10:30 Reception welcoming new attendees
  No-host bar and hors d’oeuvres

Go to next page