The Nature of Trauma and Dissociation

The impact of childhood trauma on adult sexuality PART 1

Psychoanalytic couple therapist, Professor Brett Kahr discusses the powerful, unconscious and painful impact of childhood trauma on sexual desires. With reference to his study of sexual fantasies, based on 20000 detailed responses, he explores the strong direct relationship between early relational abuse and otherwise inexplicable sexual fantasy. The subject is elucidated through psychoanalytic theory and a detailed case analysis in which an adult man’s unusual sexual fantasy is traced back to an experience of childhood sexual abuse by a family member. The self-protective, symbolic encoding of that memory into a fixed, sexual ritual is unpacked in a moving story that suggests the power of the empathic psychoanalytic interpretation.