Theorising Multi-partner Relationships and Sexualities – Recent Work on Non-monogamy and Polyamory (Book review)

This review article attests to the maturation of research into consensual non-monogamy and polyamory. It provides an in-depth review of a selection of recent publications that push boundaries and pair interdisciplinary inquiry with queer sensibility and theoretical sophistication in the three areas of theorizing emotions, theorizing intimacies and sexualities and theorizing discourses and the public sphere. This work foregrounds the persistence of moral normativity and judgemental attitudes regarding consensual nonmonogamy. It underscores the power dimension around non/monogamy and reveals the complexity of contradictory dynamics of discrimination and privileging around non/ monogamous life choices. It shows how non-monogamous people deconstruct feeling rules and demonstrates the nodal function of gender and race/ethnicity in the discursive framings of different forms of non-monogamy

Relationship therapy with lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans clients.

The history of the psychotherapeutic professions and lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) clients is a deeply troubled one (Davies and Neal, 1996). Thankfully most of the negative attitudes of the past seem to be changing with all of the major UK therapy associations (BACP, UKCP, BPS) providing guidance on working ethically with clients from sexual and gender minorities and making statements critical of conversion/reparative therapy (which is designed to change someone's sexual orientation). In spite of such changes, pathologizing stances concerning LGBT clients still exist amongst some therapists, particularly those from a psychoanalytic perspective and some religiously informed therapists. The earliest school of existential therapy – Daseinsanalysis – does not escape charges of homonegativity and heteronormativity either. Medard Boss, the founder of Daseinsanalysis wrote in his book The Meaning and Content of Sexual Perversions (1947/1949) about homosexuality as a sexual perversion and, even as recently as 1987, thought that the healthiest state for a woman was to have children in a loving relationship with a man (Boss & Kenny, 1987)