This seminar is designed to acquaint students with sexual medicine. Sexual medicine is a clinical and research discipline that combines important techniques and findings in the fields of psychiatry, urology, endocrinology, pharmacology, and clinical sex and relationship therapy, to more accurately target and treat a range of sexual dysfunctions and disorders. The seminar focuses on the development and current practice of sexual medicine, and the manner in which it unifies those broad disciplines, creates common goals for animal and human research, and translates those research findings into empirically-based treatment strategies. The goal of the course is to understand how disorders and dysfunctions of sexual arousal, desire, and orgasm, gender identity disorders, sexual pain disorders, the paraphilias, and compulsive sexual behaviors, are rooted in physiology and self-definition, and how treatments must be tailor-made to suit the needs of the individual and couple.
Students that have taken YMPC 012 (Neurobiology of Sexual Behavior) will have an advantage of already being acquainted with basic findings in neuroendocrinology, pharmacology, and the role of learning in sexual behavior. The basic reading list is the same, with the addition of the DSM-5 and ICD-11 and related online texts from the ESSM. The seminar will be structured with lectures and group discussion that acquaints you with the two classification systems for sexual disorders, their overlap and their differences, and the underlying features of the diagnoses and potential treatments.
Learning resources
Last update: James Pfaus, Ph.D. (24.01.2024)
Study materials can be found in the following link to the course in Moodle: https://dl1.cuni.cz/course/view.php?id=14624. This is a seminar, so student participation in discussions is critical. Two mechanisms of evaluation beyond this will be used. First, students will prepare a 10-min Powerpoint presentation explaining an area of sexual medicine of their interest. Second, students will receive a set of case studies for which they must make predictions about the particular sexual and/or gender disorders, and what should be systematically ruled out prior to treatment. These will be posted in Moodle on the day of the final class and students will have 2 weeks to complete them. The Powerpoint presentations and case studies are both worth 45% of the final grade, with class participation worth 10% of the final grade.
