Customer Reviews

Sex Smart

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

SexSmart is a gift to readers who have grown tired, bored and even annoyed by the many "how to" sex books on the market. Dr. Zoldbrod is one of the few professionals who explains where sexual problems begin rather than merely focusing on how to fix them. Sexual problems exist within the context of a relationship and a whole life -- they are not only about bodies and bedrooms.

As a Sex and Marital Therapist I can tell you that it is one of the most popular books in my waiting room. Even better, men read it. SexSmart provides information in digestible doses with great graphics and simple exercises that highlight the material. It's a great job!

Zoldbrod's *Sex Smart* Reviewed By Kathleen Logan Prince MSW
AASECT Certified Sex Therapist

For the vast majority of the young--from six months to eighteen years--sexuality is like a huge, unexplored continent. Each of us KNOWS that this mysterious, exciting, scary world is ours,
belongs to us. We know this from earliest times, when our own bodies--that do not lie--tell us, through powerful feelings and reactions, that there is a wonderfully rewarding world that is part of us. Inexplicably, our parents and important others, with their silence and shrouded denial, discourage us from exploration. The existence of sexuality is not exactly denied, it is treated as unlawful and we are reluctantly presented with the tip of the iceberg.

The result of this almost universal attitude is that even many
grown-ups remain uninformed about one of the most influential forces in our lives.

Dr. Aline P. Zoldbrod, an informed researcher and therapist in the world of sexuality, has written a marvelous guide to this unexplored world. She describes and explains all the various facts and practices of sexuality and turns this formerly dark continent into a healthy, known, and useful areas of life.

Dr. Zoldbrod explores nearly every aspect of sexuality and furnishes questionnaires to help the reader get personally specific about his or her own experiences, to clarify and help understand and deal with them.

She explores the spectrum of influences on sexual development from early, loving parenting to neglectful, abusive, and violent behavior. These descriptions are again equipped with detailed questions so the reader can relate to her and his own experience and make use of the suggestions about how to handle the associated feelings.

A few chapter headings suggest the inclusiveness of the book: The Touch of Love, The Foundation of Trust, Feeling Good About Your Body, What You Learned About Gender, Feeling Good About Yourself, The Dynamics of Power, Becoming a Social Person, Masturbation and Fantasy, The Changes of Adolescence, The Effects of Physical Violence on Sexuality.

This is a book you will read, and as you do, you will say to yourself, " I wish my parents had read this when I was young!"

As a couples and sex therapist who sees, every day, the consequences of sexual ignorance, I highly recommend this book.

Kathleen Logan-Prince MSW
Marital and Sex Therapist
Weston, Massachusetts

Wow! was my first reaction when reading Aline Zoldbrod's SexSmart. I am a clinical psychologist and certified sex therapist always in search of good reading material for my clients. SexSmart is tops on my list. On rare occasions I find a book that speaks the truth, dramatically enhancing a reader's understanding of self. If you buy this book, you are about to have this experience.

SexSmart isn't just another book on sexuality. SexSmart actually guides people through a personal understanding of who they are sexually - what a gift to readers wanting more for themselves and their sexuality. Readers can use this intensive exploration of how parental and social influences impact sexual expression to increase their current level of sexual satisfaction. It is in fact a book best read several times, as it is so full of great information. This is one of only a few books I keep available to my clients in the waiting room. I applaud Dr. Zoldbrod for a job well done!

For 15 years, I asked health care professionals, Why have I lost my interst in sex? Why do I love my husband as much as I do and yet increasingly fear intimacy with him? What's WRONG with ME?!! Until I read this book no one could give me the answers to questions I had given up asking. Dr. Zolbrod's one-on-one writing style and brief case studies helped me to see how much my parents attitude about their and my sexuality influenced me more the older I got and the longer I was married. The information within this book brought a level of understanding and new lines of communication my husband and I never had before. I have never been so grateful to find and read a book, and yes--this book changed my life.

Aline Zolbrod is a wonderful sex therapist. Turns out she's a wonderful writer too. Her book Sex Smart: How Your Childhood Shaped Your Sexual Life and What To Do About It is on my list of favorites. If you understand where you've come from, you can maximize where you're going. So accessible and easy to read. Wonderful suggestions for ways to be in the driver's seat of your sexuality.
Self-esteem about sexuality, enthusiasm for healthy sexual relationships-that's what this book is about. I recommend it whole-heartedly.

Though it is poorly and unevenly written in spots, I have given this book five stars because it is so very useful and important for nearly everyone and because there is nothing else I am aware of that covers the same subject in this way. ALL therapists, counselors, sex educators, etc., ought to read it for sure, but also all parents and anyone who ever had parents...

This book will help anyone who wants some insight as to why past or present relationships are as difficult as they sometimes are. You may begin reading to find out why your partner is the way he or she is, but you will find a bit here about yourself as well. We all had a "childhood" and most of us did not have perfect role models. We can all benefit from what the author has to say. It's also interesting to apply it to how we have raised our own children.

This is a fast-moving book that gives a straightforward account of how one's childhood experiences and faulty programming make up who they are as sexual adults. Zoldbrod points out that the sexual issues that people have are not just a result of past sexual trauma or physical violence, but can be the lack of emotional nourishing in one's childhood family. She says that if kids don't learn how to have healthy emotional relationships with their family of origin they can't expect fo form healthy intimate relationships with their partners. I did not want to put down this book once I started reading it because many of the scenarios that she recounted affirmed to me that my own issues are a result of the experiences of my childhood and not some unique flaw in my personality.

Worth way more than the price and precious bookshelf real-estate! _____Sex Smart_____How your childhood shaped your sexual life and what to do about it by Aline P Zoldbrod.

I grew up angry... No, really Angry! In talking with my parents, I was grounded to my room as they had no idea what else to do with me! Once I was grounded from running, but I could still go to track practice. 'laughs'

I left home to get as far away as possible for college, west coast is the farthest, I chose that one. The anger still followed. A seething rage inside, and a soft desire to connect. Am I destined to sit at the table by myself to eat? I'm trying to do what everyone else is.. why can I not seem to trap a woman into falling in love with me? I want the romance like is in the movies.. maybe I'll buy flowers, I'll try dinners, the opera, movies, bowling? maybe that will work... It didn't.

I left college for graduate school. I was in the big leagues here, I was TA-ing half time with a full time load, as a Statistics TA I had a captive audience of 300 people times 10 10 week quarters to relate to someone. I'd given up hope, in my world the best way to go to a rally was to counterprotest and that is what I did. Whatever the topic was I chose the opposite and voiced way louder than anyone else. Did it get me in the School Newspaper, Yes many times, and the Op-Ed section many more times still. All with this huge disconnect. If I am being myself, expressing all this rage without hurting anyone, why am I still so ALONE?

I met someone, she must be the one, quick! get engaged get married, get a dog, an apartment, a house... why am I still so ALONE?

Throw in a Job, (I'm an isolated Statistician) A tour in Iraq (Iraqi Army Advisor), A divorce (marriage gone brother/sister with having and loving, but missing cherishing and holding). and Still I'm STILL SO ALONE!

Having an affinity to read books that deal with sex (funny, I learned tons about it, and had little to no experience-even having been married!) _____Sex Smart_____ crossed my Amazon Recomendations. I purchased it with another 15 sex-technique-self-help-related books. Gspot this Aspot that Orgasm's galore, and I cracked the cover!

Having made journaling a regular part of my life as well as meditation (anger/rage management),I was at a spot where being comfortable with aloneness was a necessary element for togetherness. Just where I needed to be to open this book.

This book opened so many new paradigms of how life could be / or it would be nice for life to have been.
What was the impact of:
friends not being alowed at my house?
my brother being my best friend vs. someone outside the family?
moving 23 times by the age of 18?
being in so many school systems?
Knowing I didn't really have to make friends? I'd move in 6 months or less!
Me being the household babysitter at the mature age of 12?
Me being the oldest sibling?
Living in a 'Women's Shelter' for 6 weeks at the age of 16?
Loosing a father to HIV at the age of 18?
Being afraid to open the refrigerator door at someone elses house?
Being Grounded for weeks at a time?
Getting spanked with the deal that if I didn't remind them when we got home, the punishment would double?
A mother who thought it her duty to take care of the husband over her own children?
Never going to a school dance or overnight function?
why I am plagued with so much anxiety/excitement at approching things that are new?

Each chapter dealing with what happened, what my thoughts were, how I felt about it and what I needed now as an adult. I took more than 12 months to get through this book. I found I checked out or didn't want to read anymore when I was being confronted with something I had conveiniently repressed. This is not a 'sexual techniques' book or a way to 'figure out' your partner; however, it is a book you will refer to with pleasant reflection over and over again.

I wrote the questions in the beginning of the chapter in my journal and answered them before reading the text. (this also slowed me down as sometimes it would take days to recall everything I wanted to write about and my hand would hurt) I usually read a digestible chapter two to three times. Everyone of the impacts above became clear as if tearing a petal from a lotus, there is seemingly always another petal behind that one.

I saw how the first three years of life(Ken Wilber's Stage I) can create torture(being the social outcast) or togetherness (such as being five years old and having a best friend that knows you better than anyone) lasting for the next ten years of life!(Stage II) How each of us has another chance as a teenager(STAGE III) for crossing a solidifying communication 'stage' (This is how the world IS and will ALWAYS BE!) and its correlation to your ability to approach life, boldly or apprehensively, as an adult.(Stage IV) One of the last opportunities for relatedness happens when you are on your own.(Stage V). For most of us this is now, with all that baggage how am I using it as a crutch or limitation on the way I create my world. All limitations in our social life impact the sexual life. How we spend time with groups, how we spend time one on one, are we accepting of our bodies and the body of our partner doing the things human bodies do, how do we think we look in other's eyes, how we catorgorize or limit people with names(is she a 10 or a 4?), and a huge one... HAVE WE DEALT WITH OUR OWN SHAME(Stage VI)? Once you are naked before another human, what is there? What can you not say or share with them? What can you not ask them? What can you not do with them? Why are you scared before them?

I've asked many rhetorical questions in this review, this book has the capacity to answer all of them and more. Where are you holding out, where are you cheating yourself, where are you letting passivity or aggresiveness override assertiveness, complete, open self-expression to ask for what you want.. what you need?

This book was a transformation of the principle componenets analysis of my own paradigm shift in life... oh yes take the inverse square it and take the inverse again to get the real transformation. Aside from the many reviews of Doctors, Psychologists, and the like, this book is not super-clinical, does not require a college degree, and has been and IS a phenominal resource in my simple little life.

I still (naturally) become angry on occaision, and for the most part I am no longer, supplicating, passive-aggressive, or ALONE!

The importance of touch presented in this book makes me want to truly share the love of 'non-sexual' touch with everyone I see. It was a catalyst that got me to finish my National Certification Exam to be a Massage Therapist as a side job. Mostly I just volunteer, as I get just as much out of it as the client does.

I can only hope that _____Sex Smart_____ blesses your life in many more ways than it has blessed mine.

Namaste
Matt

I personally have not had the time to read the book; however, based upon reading literature written by the author began recommending it to clients who had trouble with sexual intimacy--low desire, no desire, avoidant, didn't like, etc. The clients state the book has been very helpful to them in a variety of ways--sexually and with relational communication.

Camille Chapline, Psy.D., LMFT, CSATc