Was die Liebe so kompliziert macht, und wie sie trotzdem gelingen kann

Christoph Kolbe

Love provides us with the greatest happiness, yet, at the same time, makes us most vulnerable. Since we commit ourselves wholeheartedly, when we love, we feel our deepest longings and needs, but our fears as well. Often the latter are connected more to our biography, frequently with our original and most early experiences of relationships than to our partners themselves. In love relationships we have to differentiate these experiences for clarification, maturing and true love to become possible. The article depicts characteristic couple conflicts, possibilities for understanding them and ways of dealing with them in

constructive ways.

Key Words: biography, couple conflicts, longing, love, needs, relationship experiences

Wenn Liebe zur Belastung wird

Michaela Probst

Love is an ever-present topic. There is hardly any other human area of equal importance

for the individual as love and relationship. Love is multi-facetted and manifests itself in the most varied ways. The word „love“ is omnipresent in daily life in the media, in advertisement, in the lyrics of popular music, in films, romantic novels and, last but not least, in countless counselling and enlightening books. All of these may make the word „love“ sound or be experienced as shallow or trite.

Key words: couple relationship, delimitation, love

Verliebtsein und Begehren im therapeutischen Setting

Lilo Tutsch

Erotic and sexual feelings, erotically and sexually oriented impulses and behavior are ubiquitous phenomena in therapeutic settings, but nevertheless frequently taboo

(foremost with regard to the therapist), reduced ( e.g. to a transferred love) or hypertrophied

(all patients fall in love with their therapists), reduced (e.g. to a transferred love) or hypertrophied (all patients fall in love with their therapists). The article is about phenomena showing – or hiding – erotic feelings in therapeutic settings, related attitudes and motives are

reflected on, and impulses are given on how to deal with being in love and desire in therapeutic relationships.

Key words: being in love, desire in therapeutic settings, erotic feelings, selfexperience,

sexuality,

Erotik und Sexualität in der therapeutischen Beziehung

Ines Kolbe

Relationship and, more particularly, eroticism and sexuality are topics that patients raise in therapy if they have problems with them and seek help. Psychotherapists have the task of working with their patients in a way that makes healing possible. This article shows against

a psychoanalytical background the problems that may arise in therapy in the context of these topics and various possibilities of dealing with them.

Key words: eroticism, psychoanalytical background, relationship, sexuality, therapy

Körper-Lust und Geist

Ist das Verhältnis des Menschen zur Existenz sexuell?

Alfried Längle

Existential-analytical talks are not to deal with sexuality by blindly following its driving character nor by clinging to social and religious norms. Instead, the focus should be on the individual person while attempting an anthropological and phenomenological approach. Beginning with a concept of the body that follows Merleau-Ponty in its ambiguity (being a subject in itself, being an object for others) the position of sexuality is defined between these poles of intimacy and objectification. The continuing phenomenology of the physical sex characteristics illustrates the meaning of sexuality for the inner life and the possibility of access to others. How closely related sexuality is to the self becomes clear in the fact that it contains the four fundamental conditions of existence. In the light of the anthropological dimensions several sources of sexual energy become visible. The meaning of sexuality seems to be in opening up in all dimensions of existence. This understanding is compared with the concept of libido, and the necessity of social, personal and professional evaluation of sexuality and its relativity is outlined. – Thus sexuality appears as seminal existence and as a way to the fullness of existence.

Key words: body, existence, phenomenology, sexuality

Wenn der Sex zur Sucht wird…

Godela von Kirchbach

This article presents basic aspects of sexual addiction and describes the pathogenesis, manifestation and therapy of an individual case. Criteria for addiction are highlighted and discussed from an existential-analytical point of view, and typical dangers and developments in the times of the internet and cybersex are referred to.

Key words: affective addiction, Don-Juancomplex, nymphomania, sexual addiction, sexaholism

Verführbarkeit zur Homosexualität

Ingo Zirks

The author states that sexual orientation normally cannot be changed over the live span. It seems to be determined in early childhood. However, there is some evidence of a certain variability. Frankl’s ideas about homosexuality are presented and critically examined. The anthropology of Existential Analysis opens the perspective to a human being that deals with his or her sexual orientiation within the limitations determined

by the „person“.

Key words: anthropology, Existental Analysis, homosexuality, sexual orientiation