5. Sex in Our Beds

I remember the last evening of the International Society for Sexual Medicine (ISSM) conference, held in August 2012 in Chicago. I was having a conversation with an experienced psychiatrist who knew absolutely everything about the history of sexology, who had worked directly with Helen Singer Kaplan, had many scientific publications and extensive experience as a therapist in the clinic he himself ran in New York. He was one of the conference’s big names. I confessed to him that I had mixed feelings about the event, because I had heard many discussions of sexual dysfunctions, hormones, psychological problems and medical treatments, but few on pleasure, satisfaction, the range of sexual expression or ways of improving intimacy within couples. He burst out laughing and told me, “Oh, of course! If you ask my wife she’ll tell you I know nothing about sex!”