Two researchers have published a book entitled Why Women Have Sex.  I admit I haven’t read the book, but I found it discussed and excerpted on the ABC website.  The excerpts demonstrate that women have sex for all kinds of sneaky, underhanded reasons:  revenge, pity, to get money or favors, to prove a point, to try sex with someone different, boredom, etc., etc.

Anything new here?  Despite what the researchers say, I don’t think so.  Aren’t these reasons the plot for scores of novels, plays, and films?  I was an English major, but I don’t think you have to have much expertise to come up with a list of at a bazillion familiar works of art that deal with all kinds of reasons that women have sex:  Women in Love, Lolita, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Gone with the Wind, The Thornbirds, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Fear of Flying, The Group–and those just the classics.

Another problem with the excerpts, as some of the commentators point out, is that it promotes the stereotype that women don’t enjoy sex for the sake of sex–only men do that.   Conversely, it suggests that women are the sole gender that has sex for financial gain, increased status, curiosity, or pity.

Qualitative information isn’t always valuable (neither is quantitative data).  How will this information be useful to a woman that is reading the book?  To a partner?  To a clinician?  How surprising or new or groundbreaking is it that a woman wants to have sex with someone of a different race or socioeconomic class?  What is the model for understanding female sexual desire that comes out of this data?

Or is the real message simply, “Sex sells?”

I started out optimistic, but my hopes were dashed the longer I watched the HBO series “In Treatment.” It turns out that Paul, the psychologist, never read his APA Code of Ethics.

Paul fails to report an incidence of child abuse–a 30+ year old coach sleeps with his patient, a 16 year old girl. He lets a patient give him an expensive gift. He is sloppy about collecting his fees. He allows couples to scream and punch at each other in his office. And saving the worst for last, he hugs a patient who has been trying to seduce him for a year.

How sad. Paul had the potential to give viewers who have not been in therapy a real insider’s view of the process. But no. Instead the show sank to cliches–the therapist that falls in love with patients and fails to set boundaries.

Have you watched? What do you think?

I know some people are going to ask me if I’ve been watching the HBO series “In Treatment.” Of course I have, I’m curious to see how therapists are portrayed this time. A psychologist interested in media portrayals of psychologists put them in three lists: Dr. Dippy, after a shrink shown in an asylum in a silent film from 1923; Dr. Evil, like Michael Caine in “Dressed to Kill”; and Dr. Wonderful, like Robin Williams in “Good Will Hunting.”

So far, “In Treatment” is one of the most true to life portrayals of a psychologist, which, as a New Yorker critic pointed out, is boring. Watching a psychologist listening to a patient isn’t really all that intriguing. I know, because most of my patients are too wrapped up in what is going on for them to notice what is happening on my face, which is probably pretty much a lot of nothing most of the time. After all, we need to remain objective, and if we displayed too much emotion, the client might get thrown off track or defensive. We want to help clients relax, and in relaxing, reveal the little details that they keep shored up behind carefully built walls, most of the time.

Still, I would encourage you to watch so that you get an idea of what therapy is like. It isn’t really fun most of the time. In fact, sometimes it is extremely emotionally wrenching. But slowly, slowly progress is made, hidden reality is unveiled and made into something that can be tolerated now that it has been brought into consciousness.