Human Sexuality Certificate

Human Sexuality Certificate Program

Program Description

The clinical marketplace has a perennial shortage of therapists who can work with sexuality issues. The goal of Southwestern College’s Certificate Program in Human Sexuality is to help address this shortage, and prepare therapists to add this powerful clinical specialty to their practice. Three required clinical courses will ground students in developmental sexuality and facilitate the development of specific clinical skills for thinking, theorizing, and working with a variety of sexual issues.

Consistent with Southwestern College’s experiential, self-reflective approach to clinical studies, the program will also give students an opportunity to explore their own sexual development, attitudes, assumptions, sexual history, dreams and fantasies. Areas of emphasis include: ethics, the role of sociocultural & familial factors in shaping sexual values and behavior, intimacy skills, diversities in sexual expression (BDSM, kink, tantra, polyamory), issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity, sexual exploitation (including assault, abuse, & harassment), sex addiction, tools for reducing shame and enhancing pleasure, cybersexuality and social media, the history of the discipline of sex research, theory, therapy, desire, sexual dreams and fantasies.

Upcoming Classes in this Certificate

120-HOUR CERTIFICATE

3 required core courses and
3 elective weekend courses

*Southwestern College students may take these courses at the Continuing Education price unless they are using the course to meet graduate program degree requirements. 

Core Courses: (Taught by Ginna Clark with numerous guest presenters)

• Sexual Attitudes and Development
• Clinical Skills: Theorizing and Thinking about Sexual Issues in Psychotherapy
• Clinical Skills: Working with Sexual Issues in Psychotherapy

Elective Courses: 

• Pornography and the Question of Sex Addiction
• Integrating Sexuality and Spirituality: The Heart and Soul of Sex
• Touch and Embodiment
• Innocence Betrayed: Understanding Sexual Abuse and Trauma
• Anatomy of Couples Work: Clinical Skills for Relationship Therapy
• Queer Sexualities: Desire and Identity

Skills you will learn:

• The ability to work more effectively with a wide range of sexual issues
• Specific clinical skills in diagnosing, treating, and responding to sexual issues in psychotherapy from a holistic, strengths-based perspective
• The opportunity to explore your own sexual attitudes and assumptions
• Expanding your capacity to think psychologically about sexual issues
• Managing transference and countertransference issues
• Broadening your capacity for working with relationship dynamics
• Expanding your knowledge about diversities in sexual expression
• The ability to bring conscious awareness to your own blind spots, wounding, and unresolved trauma while actively working with these issues in a healing way

Where you might use these skills:

• Private practice
• Agencies working with individuals, couples and families
• Trauma treatment centers
• Eating disorder treatment centers
• Youth Shelters
• Schools
• Colleges and universities
• Reproductive health centers
• Assisted living and retirement homes

Program Director

Ginna Clark, MA, LPCC, ATR, is a psychotherapist and art therapist in private practice in Santa Fe. She works from a relational depth-oriented perspective which integrates developmental and attachment theory, as well as object relations, interpersonal, and trauma theories. She received her Master’s degree in art therapy and counseling from Southwestern College and later pursued advanced training in sex education and clinical sexology from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. She is currently pursuing a doctorate from the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles.

Ginna is adjunct faculty at Northern New Mexico College and Santa Fe University of Art and Design where she teaches Theories of Counseling, Group Process, Abnormal Psychology, Family Systems Theory, Basic Counseling and Art Therapy. Her background includes over ten years of experience in community mental health, including psychoeducational work with survivors of sexual violence and their families, sex education with college students, and most recently psychotherapeutic work with couples and individuals with diverse issues. She has presented at national conferences and published articles on topics as varied as: sexual trauma and revictimization, adolescent sexual behavior, the history of sex research and the development of treatment interventions for sexual issues, attachment and desire, infidelity and non-monogamy. She has an ongoing interest in applying contemporary psychoanalytic thinking to better understand and help clients struggling with sexual issues, lack of desire, and unsatisfying relationship dynamics.

Ginna and the Certificate was recently featured in the Santa Fe Reporter.  Click here to read the article.