The SCHOOL of ICASA
the uk sexual Healing Centre
Surrogate Partner Therapy
Home Origins ICASA Therapists Surrogate Partners Therapy explained Men Women Fees
Information Personal Assessment Contact Questions? Client Letters In Memory Links
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The SCHOOL of ICASA the uk sexual Healing Centre Surrogate Partner Therapy
Home Origins ICASA Therapists Surrogate Partners Therapy explained Men Women Fees Information Personal Assessment Contact Questions? Client Letters In Memory Links
|
|
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What is
Surrogate Partner Therapy?
What is a Surrogate Partner? What are the popular misconceptions? What attributes or gifts do they possess? Why are there so few of them? Why are so little known about them? How does somebody become a Surrogate Partner?
Surrogate Partner Therapy helps individuals to unlearn sexual illusion in order to re-learn sexual reality, and in the process, become a whole and integrated human being. “Sexual Surrogate Partner Therapy” explains how this is accomplished. Exploding the popular misconceptions surrounding sex and exploring the mystery and esoteric nature of sexuality, this new book by David Brown, Principal of The School of ICASA, explains the power of sexual healing through Surrogate Partner Therapy.
“What do I consider as a successful outcome of Surrogate Partner Therapy? That the client is happy…that he or she feels genuinely ready for life…it’s the absence of fear…the ability to make choices”. David Brown - Interfaith Minister, spiritual counsellor and sexologist To order a copy of David Brown's book "Sexual Surrogate Partner Therapy" please telephone 01525 862068 or email us at enquiries@icasa.co.uk
The Tapestry of Surrogate Partner Therapy copyright c. 2001 Vena Blanchard
Masters
and Johnson gave us a gift. Employing
cognitive, behavioral and systems theories, they developed an exceptionally
effective program for resolving male and female sexual dysfunction. They treated
“the couple” instead of the dysfunction. Educating couples about
bodies and sexuality, assigning sensual and sexual touching (Sensate Focus)
exercises to the couple, then processing their responses to those assignments
and examining the emergent relationship dynamics, the treatment facilitated
unprecedented resolution of clients’ sexual dysfunctions. This program was a
radical (even scandalous) divergence from the traditional - and far less
effective - psychoanalytical approach to sexual symptoms. This was the beginning
of modern sex therapy, and it has since been accepted, replicated, and enhanced
by multitudes of clinicians and clients around the world.
In
Human Sexual Inadequacy (1970),
Masters and Johnson published the first description of their equally successful
treatment of single men. This
program was identical to their couples program, except that the single men
worked with surrogate partners instead of wives.
It was controversial, in 1970, to acknowledge that many people were
having sex and sexual problems outside marriage. More than thirty years later,
although sex outside of marriage no longer raises as many eyebrows, there is
still a surprising amount of mystery, controversy, and misunderstanding
regarding Surrogate Partner Therapy (SPT) and the treatment of un-partnered
clients.
Most
of today’s textbooks and training programs pay virtually no attention to the
unique treatment concerns of people who are not in relationships. This is
particularly unfortunate because there are many un-partnered clients whose
difficulties with physical and emotional intimacies inhibit them from forming
intimate relationships. These clients can’t access the best therapies for
resolving their difficulties without a partner, and their difficulties keep them
out of such helpful relationships.
“Working
with a surrogate partner,” proclaimed Bernie Zilbergeld in The New Male Sexuality (1996), “is the most effective treatment
for men who don't have a sex partner, but do have a sex problem.”
Indeed, for some clients, working with a surrogate partner is the ONLY
way to access real change. The compassion, slow pacing, emotional authenticity,
and support of two professionals provide a combination of safety and challenge
necessary for facing old injuries, gradually opening to intimacy, and building a
foundation of new experiences and skills that make it possible for them to
change their lives.
The
involvement of the client’s therapist is a cornerstone of this therapy process.
In legitimate SPT, all clients are referred by therapists and continue working
with their therapist while working with a surrogate partner.
The therapist determines whether the un-partnered client is ready to work
directly on physical and emotional intimacy issues, processes the client’s
feelings about embarking on such a project, and arranges for surrogate to meet
with the two of them. This
three-way, initial meeting provides invaluable, multi-layered information to all
three members of this therapeutic triad. If all agree to work together,
subsequent sessions are generally dyadic. Therapist and surrogate partner
consult via telephone, on a session-for-session basis throughout the case. Open,
honest, consistent communication between all three is an essential ingredient of
successful SPT.
Client
Issues
Appropriate
issues for clients to address in SPT range from generalized social anxieties to
specific sexual dysfunctions and intimacy difficulties. Concerns for either
gender might result from medical conditions, negative body image, issues of
sexual, physical or emotional abuse and/or trauma, physical disability,
confusion about sexual orientation, sexual compulsivity, or lack of sexual or
social self-confidence. SPT
clients often have concerns relating to lack of experience; fear of intimacy;
shame or anxiety regarding sex; low-level of arousal; lack of sexual desire.
SPT is available to clients of all sexual orientations.
Surrogate Partner Therapy
The
surrogate and client (Surrogate/Client) relationship is complex.
It has the potential to be a diagnostic lens, a rehearsal space, an
experiential learning center, a model for healthy relationships, and a powerful,
intimate, and authentic encounter. Controversies
regarding this adjunctive therapy arise from the fact that, in the service of
client learning, surrogate partners participate with
clients in structured and non-structured therapeutic experiences that transcend
the boundaries of traditional psychotherapy.
Surrogates
engage clients in emotionally and physically intimate interactions designed to
simultaneously create new levels of self-awareness and develop clients’
skills, comfort, confidence and tolerance for intimacy and separation. From the
first hello to the final farewell, this relationship is a vehicle for learning,
growth and change.
Legal
and Ethical Status
It
is not uncommon for uninformed individuals to jump to the inaccurate conclusions
that SPT is in some way unethical, illegal, ineffective, or simply emotionally
dangerous for clients. These assumptions are the product of imagination, not
fact. For at least the last
twenty-five years California legislature, legal authorities, and the
administrative bodies that regulate the practice of therapy have been aware of
SPT. On the rare occasions when they have had occasion to study the question,
they have indicated that there is nothing illegal or unethical about SPT as an
adjunct to psychotherapy. Like
carrying a purple purse, unless used in ways for which it is not intended, SPT
is unregulated and completely legal.
There have been no methodologically sound studies on the efficacy of SPT, so we must continue to rely on anecdotes of surrogates, clients and therapists, like Zilbergeld, who states that SPT can be nearly 100% effective with some clients who are tenaciously unresponsive to other treatment modalities.
Surrogate and Client Relationship
Surrogate/Client
interactions are intended to function simultaneously as diagnostic tools, skill
building experiences, models for intimate relationships, and stimuli for
personal transformation. Every aspect of the therapeutic process is designed to
build the clients’ capacities to create more satisfying relationship with
themselves and others. It is the
intricate interweaving of these various aspects of the Surrogate/Client
relationship that make SPT so effective a therapeutic process and challenging to
understand.
Although
SPT begins with conversational exploration of clients’ histories, the clients
are revealing themselves at every stage and through every interaction. From the
first meeting in the therapist’s office, the Surrogate/Client relationship
serves as a unique diagnostic tool -- offering therapist, surrogate, and client
opportunities to better see and understand what happens when the client is
threatened with intimacy. Projections, transference and counter transference,
anxiety, arousal, conflict, and attachment - every failure and success –
informs the triad about the client’s strengths and difficulties in intimate
relationships. Developmental
deficits, effectiveness of a client’s defenses, as well as cognitive and
behavioral patterns, which undermine satisfying intimacy, are highlighted in the
process of gradually developing the Surrogate/Client relationship.
Surrogates
discover first hand how the clients’ histories intrude on the present, and
what interventions actually create change.
As the relationship deepens and becomes increasingly important to the
client, “meaningful relationship” issues become more visible.
A well-trained surrogate often feels and reports changes in the client
even before the client recognizes that change has begun.
Skill
Building
Surrogate
partners and clients move slowly through graduated, structured exercises in
relaxation, introspection, communication, trust building, nurturing, and sensual
and sexual touching. Through exposure, successive approximation, and repetition,
these experiences simultaneously a) build practical skills, b) provide cognitive
handles and understanding, c) desensitize anxiety and PTSD triggers, and d)
provide opportunities for psychosocial development.
As the months pass, clients generally find themselves becoming more
relaxed, more open to feelings, and more comfortable with physical and emotional
intimacy. Experiences of shared
physical intimacy facilitate work on clients’ sexual self-concept and sexual
functioning. Genital-genital contact may or may not ever be therapeutically
indicated. When it is indicated it is often a minor part of the therapy.
Not
all skill development occurs in the behavioral arena or within individual
sessions. While care is taken to
assure that the client will benefit from each new step, shared decision-making
is an essential part of every Surrogate/Client session. Encouraging increased
client contributions to decision-making over the course of therapy increases
client capacity for self-care, introspection, management of boundary issues, and
sense of efficacy. Authenticity and
intimacy in the Surrogate/Client relationship serve to build emotional and
interpersonal relationship skills. Clients find both freedom and challenge in
having a relationship in which they are honest about their biggest and most
closely guarded secrets – their shame, sadness and fears tied up in their
sense of being sexually and emotionally inadequate.
Modeling
Whether
intended or not, values are always visible.
What we encourage clients to notice about themselves and others
communicates a world of permission or prohibition. What isn’t asked may say as much about values as what is asked.
Clients learn from what they experience in therapy as well as from what
is advised and assigned. In SPT the
communication of values should be an integrated, conscious aspect of the
therapeutic context that therapist and surrogate manage on behalf of the
client’s learning and well-being.
Both
the overarching structure of SPT and most of the sessions are designed as models
for the creation and maintenance of healthy, high-quality relationships.
Clinician authenticity, open-minded respectfulness, compassion and
availability for intimacy demonstrate behaviors that the client will need in
future relationships and communicate volumes to clients about our assessment of
their worthiness.
A
well-trained, mature surrogate partner will continue to care for and pursue
emotional connection despite clients’ efforts to push them away, because they
realize that unattractive client presentations are reflections of just how much
care these clients need.
Therapeutic
Value of Intimacy and Obstacles
In
love relationships, our search to know and be known, to love and be lovable
leads to deeply felt experiences that generate profound shifts in our emotional
skills and in our sense of self. For some clients, wounding in early
relationships results in their withdrawal from and sabotage of future
relationship opportunities. Defending against their fear of dependence,
exposure, and loss, these clients deprive themselves of the maturational
experiences and transformational influences of intimate relationships. SPT is
sometimes the only way for such clients to heal and ultimately access the growth
and development.
Consistently
experiencing their surrogate partner’s openness, acceptance, commitment to the
relationship, and encouragement to deepen communication helps clients to
eventually risk revealing themselves. They
reveal themselves within the triad and end up with a more solid sense of
themselves. Sharing experiences
creates a sense of intimacy and bonding, which further facilitates sharing and
risking, thus stretching the clients’ capacities for emotional risk and
increasing trust in self and others. Grappling
with the emotional risks, anxieties, and elation of genuine emotional contact
simultaneously empowers and disequilibrates clients.
With the support of therapist and surrogate this disequilibration can
make room for valuable self-discovery, self-acceptance and self-actualization.
In this way, the Surrogate/Client relationship has the potential to be an
arena of profound healing and transformation - for healing the insidious effects
of trauma, and for repairing clients’ damaged relationships with their
sexuality and sense of self-worth.
Although
the relationship between surrogate partner and client is temporary, the
experiences of genuine, loving intimacy and authenticity remain forever as
touchstones in the client’s inner world.
Clients not only blossom in the relationship with their surrogate
partner; their growth is reflected in their every relationship, including their
deepest relationship with themselves.
Intimacy is the here-and-now experience of revealing our authentic selves to one another. It entails emotional contact, knowing, and being known by another. It does not require reciprocity of exposure, but it does require an experience of both partners being fully present and attentive and open to each other.
Authenticity
refers to the quality of one’s presence.
It reflects an orientation toward intimacy. It means that when we listen we are listening with our whole
selves, not just our intellect. It
means that we offer genuine caring and attention, not a pretense of caring.
Authenticity is important in the creation of trust, which plays a big
role in risk and change, and it sends a message about your values.
Author: Vena Blanchard is President of the International Professional Surrogates Association (IPSA), Vice-President of SSSS/AASECT LA chapter, a sex educator and surrogate partner for over twenty years. For information about SPT visit the IPSA website, www.surrogatetherapy.org |
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Home Origins ICASA Therapists Surrogate Partners Therapy explained Men Women Fees Information Personal Assessment Contact Questions? Client Letters In Memory Links
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