Critical Introduction - Old Silent Assumptions

2. The Myth of Therapeutic Impartiality

Individual fulfillment and social restraint
As with the belief in a "natural sexuality," the second great silent assumption also cannot stand up to rational scrutiny. The belief in therapeutic impartiality is simply another self-serving delusion. After all, if society really had an interest in individual sexual fulfillment, the dysfunctions would be far less common than they are today, and they would all be traceable to particular individual conditions and circumstances. However, in our society this is not the case. The very fact that so many people need sex therapy points to a larger social problem. Indeed, serious therapists sooner or later find themselves in conflict with certain prevailing sexual values. After all, their professional goal is to free their clients from their inhibitions, and, in most cases, these inhibitions are due to negative social influences. Good sex therapy, therefore, leads to the client’s sexual emancipation and self-determination. By the same token, those who merely help an individual conform to society are not engaged in true therapy but in adjustment training. However, it is this function of sex therapists as unwitting agents of social control which disturbs some libertarians. They deplore the frequently naive approaches of therapists and ridicule their efforts as repressive interventions or simply as "sex by prescription". While this criticism is exaggerated, its basic thrust should be kept well in mind by all sex therapists. Their first duty is always to their clients.