ABSTRACT
Sexology and sex therapy are not practiced in the same way in different cultures, even in different countries belonging to the same Western culture. A cultural approach to sexology must certainly take into account the “patient view” (Armstrong, 1984; Condrau, 2007), attending to their culturally “different” experiences, particularly when they are related to a non-Western culture, as is the case for the majority of the chapters published in this book. We know the extent to which culture shapes the sense of the self and subjectivities (Biehl, Good, & Kleinman, 2007; Wagner, 1981) as well as the healing practices of a particular group (Kleinman, 1980). Accounting for subjectivities and contexts should not be restricted to patients and those originating from non-Western cultures. Western individuals and professionals, in particular those who work in the field of sexuality, exert their own subjectivities that can be defined as countertransference (i.e., the subjective and somewhat unconscious emotional reactions of the clinician; Giami, 2001) or the “point of view of the professional.” Given the diversified services offered to clients it is necessary to consider sexology and the practices of sexologists and sex therapists as an expression of the cultural and social milieu in which they occur. Sexology and sex therapy practices, as professional practices, present important variations across cultures, and also to a certain extent within the same culture. Such differences and variations, which are not accidental and include the national and cultural context, training, and social organization of health services and professional motivation, are identified and analyzed in this chapter.
