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Toward a Trauma-Informed Approach to Adult Sexuality: A Largely Barren Field Awaits its Plow

  • Integrating the Psychosocial (B McCarthy, RT Segraves and AH Clayton, Section Editors)
  • Published:
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Abstract

In the 35 years since the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder was named, a body of knowledge has developed that defines psychological trauma and its effects. The growing subfield surrounding trauma was in the vanguard of bridging the gap between neuroscience and clinical psychology by developing perspectives that are inquisitive about brain function and by identifying signature disruptive dysregulations of the nervous system that traumatic experience may elicit. While we have anecdotal awareness of how these dysregulations affect adult sexual life, there is little formal research or scholarly literature in the mental health or medical fields about these effects. What little does exist tends to focus on the impact of sexual trauma, leaving out the vast array of other important categories of traumatic experience affecting sexual function. This article recommends increased research and education about all forms of trauma as well as the development of specific therapeutic methodologies to advance sexual healing in a sizeable client population suffering from sexual difficulties engendered or affected by such experiences.

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  1. San Francisco, CA, USA

    Ruth Cohn

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  1. Ruth Cohn
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Correspondence to Ruth Cohn.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Integrating the Psychosocial

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Cohn, R. Toward a Trauma-Informed Approach to Adult Sexuality: A Largely Barren Field Awaits its Plow. Curr Sex Health Rep 8, 77–85 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11930-016-0071-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11930-016-0071-4

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