Sexual Performance Anxiety – Part 3: Considering a Treatment Approach Based on a Unified Model
56m
David Rowland
Senior Research Professor of Psychology
Trailer
Get AccessFull VideoContent and aim: “You don’t have to control your thoughts; you just have to stop letting them control you” (Dan Millman). This powerful quote from Prof David Rowland’s last lecture sets the stage for our discussion on performance anxiety, concluding the three IOSS educational videos on this topic.
In this lecture, Prof Rowland focuses on treatment. He introduces the most renowned treatment approaches to performance anxiety, sharpening specifically on the Dual Cognitive Processing model. This model refers to two cognitive processes: the reflective/deliberative and the reflexive/automatic, both important to performance outcomes. The primacy of automatic processing for peak performance has to be considered. When it comes to sexuality, factors that trigger anxiety can disrupt the optimal balance between the two processes, leading to sexual failure.
Conceptualizing treatment for performance anxiety within the Dual Processing Model framework means using therapeutic strategies to reestablish and preserve the dominance of automatic processing during sexual activity. David Rowland explains how the main clinical approaches can help reach this goal and why it makes sense to tailor the sexological treatment more on balancing the cognitive processes rather than on limited specific targets.
Produced in 2024
David Rowland
Senior Research Professor of Psychology
Lecturer
David Rowland, Senior Research Professor of Psychology at Valparaiso University, USA, received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in psychology in 1977 and has held postdoctoral and research fellowships at SUNY-Stony Brook in Psychiatry, Stanford University in Physiology, Erasmus Medical Center (Netherlands) in Endocrinology and Reproduction, and the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Mental and Behavioral Health.
His research and scholarship have focused on understanding psychophysiological relationships, particularly insofar as they are applied to psychosexual response in men and women.
Rowland has published many (stopped counting!) research papers, review articles, and book chapters related to sexual behavior and functioning, using both rats and humans as study subjects. Most have focused on sexual response and dysfunction in both men and women, and many have emphasized the value of applying holistic and interdisciplinary perspectives to the study of sexuality, often attempting to bring novel conceptual, methodological, and cross-cultural approaches to addressing age-old issues within the field.
He has authored and co-edited several books, including The Handbook of Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders (2008), Sexual Dysfunction in Men (2012), Proceedings on Translational Medicine (2018), and Cultural Differences and the Practice of Sexual Medicine (2020). In addition to holding positions on numerous editorial boards of journals, he served as editor of the Annual Review of Sex Research 2005-2009, is co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Mind and Medical Science (JMMS), and is editor-in-chief of the journal Sexes.
He has served as a consultant on advisory boards for grant development, drug development and testing, program internationalization, and standardization of diagnostic criteria for the World Health Organization and various professional organizations. He has held honorary positions at the University of Jos, Nigeria, and Bahria University, Pakistan, and has conducted workshops on various research and pedagogical-related topics as a Fulbright Specialist and Scholar-in-Residence.
Among his various academic responsibilities, Rowland has particularly valued his role as an educator and mentor, and even after retirement from active teaching, he continues to mentor 5-10 students annually through an ongoing research workgroup that attempts to instill an appreciation for and understanding of the scientific process and method through active research participation. He also served as Dean of the Graduate School at Valparaiso University for 16 years and Associate Provost of Graduate Education for 5 years before assuming the position of Executive Director of Institutional Innovation.
On a personal note, he has been a worldwide wanderer and student of ideas since 1989, lived abroad for several years in the Netherlands, cycles regularly as an exercise in mindfulness, and, as part of his avocation for history, enjoys visiting “has-been” destinations in the US (places where nobody else bothers to go anymore).