Chapter 10:Sensate Focus 1 and 2
The initial Sensate Focus suggestions are just that, the initial suggestions. We have been referring to these as Sensate Focus 1. The emphasis has been on psycho-education, cognitive-behavioral patterns, affect management, unproductive relationship dynamics, and mindfulness techniques when working with individuals or couples who present with sexual dysfunctions. However, alleviating sexual dysfunctions is not all there is to sex therapy in general and Sensate Focus in particular. Even when individuals and couples ostensibly come in to address their dysfunctions, their ultimate goal is often improving the overall satisfaction of their relationship. They want more emotional closeness, greater intimacy, better sensual communication, and more engaging sexual experiences. This is where Sensate Focus 2 comes in.
Moving From Sexual Dysfunction to Sexual Enrichment: Sensate Focus 2
Sensate Focus 2 emphasizes the enrichment, enhancement, or optimization of sexual relationships rather than just the resolution of sexual dysfunction. Peggy Kleinplatz has spearheaded sexual optimization, studying couples that report having great sex. The characteristics she has identified as typifying sexual optimization, what we refer to as Sensate Focus 2, suggest overlaps with Sensate Focus 1. In fact, Sensate Focus 2 incorporates two of the most salient characteristics of Sensate Focus 1, namely, being mindfully present and being authentic. With regard to the first, “The most predominant and fully articulated characteristic … [is] being ‘fully present’ and ‘totally absorbed in the moment’” (Kleinplatz & Ménard, 2007, p. 73). With regard to authenticity, the emphasis is on each partner’s absorption in, candor with, and expression of his or her own experience: “Being present [is] inextricably linked for most participants with a second component of being themselves … and being relentlessly honest with themselves.”
However, Sensate Focus 2 moves beyond mindful self-focus that encourages developing an authentic relationship with one’s own sensuality. The spotlight is increasingly on “feeling free to be themselves with their partners” (Kleinplatz & Ménard, 2007, p. 73, emphasis added). Now we begin to highlight the interaction between the partners rather than what is happening with each individual client. More and more attention is paid to their emotional connection, their sexual and erotic intimacy, and their communication.
Intense emotional connection involves heightened engagement with one another. Sexual and erotic intimacy includes the willingness to be vulnerable and to surrender, trusting that the partner will respond with care and generosity. Communication is associated with both the verbal and non-verbal exchange of information, and also with the sounds and vocalizations that each partner experiences as stimulating and ultimately arousing. In our experience it is the qualities of intense emotional connection, vulnerability, surrender, and communication that most couples hope to bring to, or access within, their relationship when they come for sex therapy. This is regardless of whether their original goal is to resolve a sexual dysfunction or optimize their sexual intimacy.
However, there is one additional characteristic of Sensate Focus 2 that is perhaps even more important than these relationship enhancements. Clients do not talk about it directly, perhaps because it crosses over into the realm of indescribable experience. However, over the years we have come to appreciate it as the ultimate, if unspoken, goal of those who come in for sex therapy. Kleinplatz refers to this as transcendence. It goes by many names, none of which do it justice: “‘peak experience,’ … ‘magical experiences,’ and ‘spirituality’ … ‘a portal to an alternate reality’ … ‘expansive and enlightening’ … ‘it leaves you bigger than you were before’ … ‘flashes of illumination’ … ‘It [is] revelatory – an epiphany’” (Kleinplatz & Ménard, 2007, pp. 75–76). Noted analyst James Hollis refers to it as “the god to be found in sexuality” and suggests that clients who want to enrich their sexual lives “follow what [the poet] Rilke called the dark ‘river god of the blood’ … The higher power are powers, indeed, but so are the lower ones … [and] sexuality, the dark river god of the blood, is sacred” (1998, pp. 91–92). This spiritual or transcendent dimension of sexuality requires entering into the radically self-focused mindset of Sensate Focus 1 but this time through a deeply sensorial, sensual, and emotional relationship with the partner that characterizes Sensate Focus 2. This is when absorption in the sensations moves into absorption by the sensations and ultimately into an altered state of consciousness that is transcendent sexual responsiveness to which we refer in Chapter 2 (Why is Sensate Focus Based on Touch?). This sensorial, sensual, sexual, emotional, and relational integration leads not only to the enlargement of each partner but also to the enlarged intimate connection between the partners.
Techniques for Optimizing Sexual Intimacy and Interaction
Suggestions to enhance sexual satisfaction and enrich intimate communication will be the subject of subsequent publications. But a brief mention of some of these techniques is helpful if only to distinguish them from those used in Sensate Focus 1. A summary of Sensate Focus approaches also is important to re-emphasize the main goal of this Illustrated Manual, namely, to clarify the purpose of Sensate Focus 1 as mindfully self-focused touching.
Sensate Focus 2 suggestions incorporate more information between partners about what each prefers sensorally, sensually, and sexually (Weiner & Avery-Clark, 2014). In the non-verbal arena, Sensate Focus 2 emphasizes positive handriding to a much greater extent. The Touchee is increasingly encouraged to place his/her hand on top of or beneath the Toucher’s hand and to direct the Toucher’s hand towards areas that the Touchee finds not only interesting (in terms of vivid tactile sensations) but also arousing, pleasurable, and enjoyable. Words of this evaluative, emotional nature are increasingly woven into the fabric of the Sensate Focus therapy sessions. This is because by the time they reach Sensate Focus 2, most couples are aware of the difference between sensations and emotions like arousal and pleasure, and they know how to refocus on these sensations if and when they have difficulty staying focused on emotions without becoming goal-oriented.
Additionally, direct verbal communication is increasingly encouraged as partners are invited to openly express more subtle preferences during the touching sessions. Their communication outside of the bedroom can also become a greater focus as the interaction between what goes on inside and outside of the bedroom is increasingly taken into account.
Back in the bedroom, or wherever the touching experiences are taking place, couples are encouraged to expand their emotional connection, intimacy, and communication through experimenting with a wider variety of activities and adjuncts. For example, clients are invited to read material to one another they find arousing, and to share visual images. They are emboldened to create fantasy scenarios and games, and they can act these out if it is of interest to them and helpful for them. They are urged to incorporate toys and vibrators into their play together with other accessories such as cock rings, dildos, and any other accouterments they might have thought about but never actually included. These activities will not be of interest to, or comfortable for, everyone. Couples are invited to explore them at least once if they are so inclined, or not, all with the goal of discovering what is mutually engaging.
The Relation Between Sensate Focus 1 and 2
Even when Sensate Focus 2 has been initiated, the skills developed during Sensate Focus 1 still serve a purpose. Clients are reminded that should they encounter difficulty, should they find themselves slipping back into a demand orientation expecting desire, arousal, or orgasm, or should they experience their partner’s appearing to regress, they can redirect their attention back to the touch sensations for their own interest in order to ground themselves once again in something reliable. At any point couples might find themselves having renewed concerns and so it is important that clinicians normalize this pattern. Even something so simple as going a week without any physical contact may be enough for old habits of goal orientation and anxiety to slip back into the touching and make it seem uncomfortable and even awkward. Returning to a couple of sessions of Sensate Focus 1 may bring them back to the ease with which they were having physical contact previously.
However, the most important point about the relation between Sensate Focus 1 and 2 is that it is not possible to experience intense emotional connection, sexual and erotic intimacy, open communication, and inspiring transcendence without first knowing the basics of self-focused sensorial absorption. This is the foundation of all deeply meaningful sexual experiences. One could think of it this way: Would an introductory teacher put you in the same proverbial ring with a highly trained expert in the field? Would a boss count on you to handle a tricky professional negotiation if you were brand new to the job? More than likely you would be trained to master new and basic skills essential to your goal, and you would be assisted in unlearning problematic habits, all in an effort to ensure you succeed. It is the same with Sensate Focus 1. In order to dismantle the anxiety-engendering performance and demand distractions that contribute to sexual problems, clients must first learn how to manage these differently before they can move on to optimizing sexual involvement. In order to ground themselves once basic skills have been learned and enhancement is at hand, clients can return to foundational Sensate Focus 1 techniques whenever the expected regressions and difficulties resurface. And we tell them so!