Webinars

Therapy First provides a range of trainings for mental health clinicians working with young people who are questioning their identity. Therapy First members always have free access to the recordings of previous trainings. To explore upcoming webinars, click below.

Pornography and the Flight from Sexuality from a Psychodynamic Perspective

Dr. Karin Nadrowski

Monday April 8th noon EST

Living in an oversexed world, being bombarded by the media with sex and nudity, makes us numb, lets our desire vanish. We observe declining engagement in sexual activity, but also a gradual desexualisation of therapy, including psychoanalysis, as well as medical classification systems.

In this webinar we will discuss how this applies to gender dysphoria. Internet pornography, often accessed already far before puberty, distorts the sexual knowledge of youth. It aggravates sexual stereotypes, portraying males as aggressors and women as passive and degraded. It alienates both girls and boys from their phantasies of female or male sexuality and gender expression. This needs to be talked about in therapy.

At the same time, sex is disappearing from our diagnostic classification systems. For example, in the transition from ICD-10 to ICD-11 we observe the omission of chapter F66 (Disorders associated with sexual development and orientation). Additionally, we observe a reluctance to talk or research about autogynephilia in the etiology of gender dysphoria in boys and men.

From a psychodynamic perspective, both the appearance of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) and the eagerness of the medical system to accept the "born in a wrong body“ narrative have been suggested to represent new forms of hysteria. We will discuss how this framing might inform our approach to discussing dysphoria and reintegrating sexuality into therapy.

Therapy First has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider,
ACEP No. 7505. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Therapy
First is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs. This webinar provide 1.5 hours of CE credits.

Dr. Karin Nadrowski holds a PhD in ecology and is a clinical physician in psychiatry. She is training to become a psychiatrist and psychodynamic psychotherapist. She is also gender nonconforming, and a desister, and serves on the board of a lesbian organization in Berlin. She has recently published the article, "A New Flight from Womanhood? The Importance of Working Through Experiences Related to Exposure to Pornographic Content in Girls Affected by Gender Dysphoria“ in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, https://doi.org/10.1080/0092623X.2023.2276149