Dr. Berman Video

We had the opportunity to watch 3 couples go through an intimate journey in Dr. Berman's sex therapy clinic through a video in class this past week. I was particularly impressed with some of her therapeutic skills, which showed some compassionate validation and great cheer leading when appropriate. I also heard her use some solution-focused questions and implement some really creative strategies for each of the couples' individual needs. She did a great job of using exception questions to focus on when and how the problem was occurring, and on normalizing behaviors and responses that the couples felt were abnormal. One really great outcome I noticed for the third couple was that they reported better communication overall in their relationship after working specifically with Dr. Berman on their communication in the bedroom.

However, there were some elements of Dr. Berman's practices that I did not agree with as much, including the fact that she still seemed to take a biological stance to approaching human sexuality. This may be due to her joint work with her sister, but it seemed somewhat contrary to the way we have been learning to approach sexuality from a therapeutic lens. Additionally, many of the treatments and interventions she implemented were treating arousal and not desire, which is not what the women were concerned about. These interventions included the couples games and activities she assigned for the couples to do at night, and in particular, the assignment for the youngest couple to go home and kiss each other, when they were clearly experiencing underlying relationship issues as evidenced by their reported fighting at least twice a day. On the same note, the oldest couple still left the clinic with the wife given a prescription for hormone treatments, which seems to undermine all of the relational work they did during their week-long stay. In sum, I thought Dr. Berman showed some great therapy skills when she interviewed the couples but fell short in being able to implement interventions that will likely lead to lasting change.