Naked Ghosts: Intimate Stories from the Files of a Sex Therapist

Reading like detective stories, these five illustrative accounts of her work reveal Wells's ( Right Brain Sex ) powerful respect--and talent--for narrative. With reconstructed dialogue, revealing details and a firm grounding in the principles of developmental psychology, she illuminates her patients' fears, obsessions and, in some cases, triumphs. Calling on memory techniques and careful therapeutic probing, she helps patients trace their current difficulties--one man is addicted to sex with strangers; another is a virgin in his 30s, deeply fearful of all intimacy; one woman is trapped in a masturbatory fantasy that threatens relationships with others--back to incidents and attitudes encountered in their childhoods. Without prurience or unrealistic expectations, Wells's straightforward stories offer hope for change to those whose lives are limited by destructive sexual habits. Psychotherapy Book Club selection. (Feb.)