Location: Virtually on Zoom

Description: Sexuality is often present in group therapy long before anyone actually talks about sex. It can emerge through desire, flirtation, humor, silence, competition, shame, attraction, avoidance, or simply a shift in the emotional temperature of the room. This seminar explores sexuality as part of the unconscious relational life of the group and considers the ways desire, aggression, shame, and stimulation become intertwined. Drawing on psychoanalytic sex therapy, relational theory, trauma-informed thinking, and group process, we will pay particular attention to how groups defend against or regulate sexual and aggressive material, how leaders may participate in these processes, and how countertransference and embodied responses can become useful sources of clinical information. Through didactic material, clinical examples, an experiential group process, and discussion, participants will consider how to create enough safety and containment for difficult material to become thinkable and speakable without shutting down the intensity and aliveness that can make group work transformative.

Presenter Bio:

Juliane Maxwald is a licensed psychoanalyst, AASECT-certified sex therapist, author, and educator with more than 20 years of clinical experience. She teaches and supervises across a variety of psychoanalytic and sex therapy institutes and training programs. Her clinical and teaching work integrates relational psychoanalysis, sex therapy, and trauma-informed approaches, with a particular interest in the unconscious meanings of sexuality, desire, shame, and relational experience. She is the author of Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality (Routledge, 2026) and maintains a private practice in New York City working with individuals and couples.

If you have any questions or concerns, contact the Seminar Series Co-Chairs, Nardia Brooks and Jacqueline Ambrosini.