Whore phobia: The experiences of a dual-training sex worker–psychotherapist

Abstract

This paper seeks to facilitate a discussion across schools of psychotherapy and UK professional registration bodies around the controversial and misunderstood subject of being a dual-trained/training psychotherapist and sex worker. Despite its importance to a minority of practitioners and clients, the potential overlap between sex work and psychotherapy remains an understudied and underreported area. We aim to open up conversation regarding the potential of sexuality work to therapeutically benefit clients for whom talking therapy alone is insufficient. We illustrate how medical theories of pathology are linked to gender diversity and then applied by “therapeutic” communities to marginalise and suppress competing ways to provide therapeutic contact. Our dialogue highlights the practice and philosophical inconsistencies of mainstream psychotherapies' codes of ethics and conduct, which underpin how dual-trained sex worker–therapists are deemed to bring the profession into disrepute. Rather than protecting the public, perhaps some sections of the public are left at greater risk of harm because such codes of ethics are unable to respect perceived transgressive sexualities, yet are comfortable with how practitioners are paid for intimate (albeit psychological) contact. We look into psychotherapy's shadow, and show that dual-trained sex-worker–therapists have something to offer. We also suggest ways to express sexual rights and reclaim sexuality bodywork from those who can be said to seek to exert power and control over the minds and bodies of others.