Videotape reviews — The Lovers’ Guide: Advanced Sexual Techniques / The Lovers’ Guide: Better Orgasms
Trepper, Terry S
The Lovers’ Guide: Advanced Sexual Techniques and The Lovers’ Guide: Better Orgasms. (1993). (Videotape on improving sexuality.) Producer: Lifetime Vision Limited, P.O. Box 4326, Chatsworth, CA 91311. 90 minutes, no price.
I think that I have seen virtually every film and video series designed as “adult sex education” over the past 20 years. I know exactly what you are thinking, but it really is part of my job! Many of these films and videos are quite useful in sex therapy practice, serving as positive modeling, providing suggestions for skill improvement, and encouraging sexual communication. Most offer a combination of didactic presentation by a “sex expert” and scenes of couples explicitly demonstrating the various concepts discussed.
The two videos under review follow this format completely. They have a world-renowned expert in sexuality, Dr. Andrew Stanway, offering commonsensical if not whimsical advice on improving sexuality. They also have a variety of young couples engaging in the behaviors Stanway is discussing. They offer no new information since, frankly, there is not much new that can be taught about sexuality.
Still, I found these to be the best of any series on sexuality that I have ever seen. My graduate students in my two-semester sex therapy sequence, who have become quite the connoisseurs of sex films appropriate for therapy, also found these two tapes to be the best.
I think The Lovers’ Guide videos are quite successful in striking a balance between providing accurate information about sex and encouraging sex to be fun. In these postsexual revolution days, many professionals are afraid to sound “sex positive.” But what many of our sex therapy couples need is just this sort of modeling of the playful aspects of sex. The Lovers’ Guide series encourages the fun, the spontaneous, the creative side of sex.
Better Orgasms focuses, as its name implies, on improving the orgasmic response. It is divided into three sections, one for women, one for men, and one for couples. This tape would be quite useful in work with people with orgasmic disorders, including premature ejaculation and inhibited male and female orgasm. It would also be useful to those couples wishing to have simultaneous orgasms or to increase their orgasmic intensity. Advanced Sexual Techniques offers suggestions for improving all aspects of sexuality, including sexual communication and fantasy. With “chapters” such as “Planning Romantic Liaisons,” “Intensifying Intercourse,” and “Sex Beyond the Bedroom,” viewers are invited to be as creative with sex as they might with cuisine .
I highly recommend this series to any practitioner who works with sexual disorders. These videos are first-rate in production quality, provide accurate and current information (including excellent information on safer sex practices), and have wonderfully erotic yet tasteful scenes which I guarantee will keep your clients’ interest. The British accents of the narrators add a certain credibility that also contributes to the videos’ overall effectiveness. And if you wish to prescreen these videos, as well you should, you can always tell any intruders that you know what they are thinking, but this really is part of your job!
Terry S. Trepper, PhD Purdue University-Calumet Hammond, IN
Copyright American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy Apr 1995
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