Marriage, Women's Sexuality, Sex - Guides & Manuals - Heterosexual, Sex - Psychological Aspects, Marriage - General & Miscellaneous

Satisfaction

Name: Satisfaction
Author: Anita Clayton
ISBN: 9781400064526

by Clayton, Anita H., Cantor-Cooke, Robin

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Overview

Why are so many women dissatisfied with their sex lives?

Something is missing from their intimate encounters: either they’re not interested in sex anymore, or they are interested but can’t get aroused, or they can get aroused but have neither the desire nor the energy to follow through. Their relationships are suffering. Many women find themselves wondering what’s wrong with them.

If you’re a woman and any of this sounds familiar, Dr. Anita H. Clayton wants you to know that there’s nothing wrong with you–what’s wrong is the ridiculous fantasies you’ve been sold about sex, and the unrealistic expectations you cling to. We all want to make love the way they do in the movies, where the woman swoons with desire before the man even gets near her and, once he does, gasps, collapses, and hurtles headlong into orgasm in twenty seconds tops. Now, how often does that happen in real life? Not very–because in real life it takes at least that long to get your panty hose off, not to mention locking the door locked so the kids don’t barge in.

In this irreverent and revolutionary volume, Dr. Clayton lays bare hidden facets of female sexuality that are rooted in the psyche and can catapult a woman either into a cathartic bout of ecstasy or against the headboard into yet another disappointment. Through compelling case histories she explores why many women would rather put up with unsatisfying sex than tell their lovers how to please them; how buried feelings about childbearing can affect a woman’s erotic potential; and why an orgasm you have during intercourse is no more “real” or legitimate than one you achieve through other means. Dr. Clayton also shines a light on sexual attitudes that have a dramatic impact on young girls and teens, and details how motherhood and menopause may affect but need not diminish a woman’s capacity for sexual pleasure.

Dr. Clayton believes that women should have high expectations for their sex lives, but that these expectations should come from visceral, intimate knowledge of ourselves–what is normal for us and what feels good to us. She wants you to consider and eventually own the concept of yourself as every bit as sexual as a sex symbol. Indeed, the only person who should symbolize sex for you is you.

About the Author, Anita Clayton

Anita H. Clayton, M.D., is the David C. Wilson Professor of Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatric Medicine at the University of Virginia and holds a secondary faculty appointment as professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology. She has chaired or served on twenty-five academic committees. Dr. Clayton is also a consulting editor for the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy and writes a bimonthly column for Primary Psychiatry. She has been featured in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Psychiatric Times, and Ladies Home Journal. She is a wife and mother and lives just outside of Charlottesville, Virginia.

Robin Cantor-Cooke has worked as a writer, editor, and producer on more than forty books and tape programs. She is an adjunct instructor at the College of William and Mary and lives with her husband and two sons in Williamsburg, Virginia.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Claiming that millions of American women in all ethnic, cultural and economic groups are dissatisfied with their sex lives, psychiatrist Clayton urges readers to "min[e] the vein of gold that is your sexual self." Patient case studies include a thrice-divorced woman whose fear of abandonment plunges her into affairs with bad guys when she's married to good ones, and a lesbian whose sexual attraction to a straight, married colleague is symptomatic of intimacy problems stemming from abandonment by her mother. Aided by freelance writer Cantor-Cooke, Clayton also demonstrates how a doctoral student worked out an Oedipal conflict through her affair with an older professor who eventually threw her over for his wife, a Chinese dissident finally allowed to emigrate to the U.S., and how a college student who, claiming she was unaware that she had been pregnant, left her newborn to die of exposure in a toilet was unprepared for a sexual relationship because her identity was bound up in her Catholic upbringing. Although much of Clayton's relationship advice is sound, it's also familiar and readily available in countless other volumes, and Clayton casts too wide a net as she ranges from medical disorders that cause sexual dysfunction to women's attitudes toward pregnancy and sex. (Jan. 9) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Clayton, a psychiatrist specializing in female sexuality, and writer/editor Cantor-Cooke offer women a manual for psychological self-diagnosis about how they influence and perpetuate their own sexual circumstances. Chapters cover attraction to unsuitable partners, pregnancy hopes and fears, sexuality and motherhood, parenting teen daughters, shame, menopause, and physical or medical problems. Each chapter includes several fascinating case studies analyzed with considerable skill-a few involving lesbian couples-and concludes with questions to mobilize the reader's insights about her own sexual concerns. The drawback: not enough guidance about what to do next. Clayton treats her own patients with wise counsel and carefully selected antidepressants and hormones. While she claims that most of her patients come away with a sense of revelation about themselves and the improvement of their situation, she and her prescriptions assist considerably in the making-better process. Recommendations about finding a good psychiatrist and perhaps for further reading would have been most appropriate. This is one of the best-written and most understandable books on sexuality this reviewer has seen recently, incorporating both immediacy and judicious humor, but its drawbacks limit it to larger collections.-Martha Cornog, Philadelphia Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.