CARAS Con Addresses Polyamory Community Needs

Yesterday was a great day.  I had the privilege of mixing and mingling with about 50 people, a great mixture of academics, students, researchers and community advocates, who gathered together in Washington, DC, to learn about and discuss issues and methods around meeting the therapeutic and informational needs of alternative sexuality communities, including polyamorists, at the 5th annual conference of the Community-Academic Research Consortium for Alternative Sexualities.

The day started with a plenary address by author and sex therapist Gloria Brame who spoke about many things, including the need to correct misunderstandings about what constitutes sex addiction and the continuing effects of sex negativity in the United States.  Gloria is a well known and highly respected champion of the BDSM community, and after our having become friends on Facebook, it was delightful to finally have an opportunity to meet her in person.  I am very much looking forward to reading her new book, The Truth About Sex, A Sex Primer for the 21st Century Volume I: Sex and the Self.

Some of the poly-related programs included the presentation of research results around polyamory and bisexuality, and about polyamory in the context of personal freedom.  I facilitated a discussion at lunch time about what alt sex communities need from researchers.  There were many good suggestions, including emphasis by three attendees who were college students who spoke about the lack of options to gather with other non-monogamous and/or kinky people on their campuses.  NCSF's Judy Guerin spoke on behalf of that organization, and we both encouraged others to establish their own groups but to also reach out to those of us who can advise them along the way.

Programming continued in the afternoon with great choices for an advocate like myself - I had no problem deciding what to take in, there was always at least one session I wanted to attend. 

Networking opportunities abound at this conference.  I connected with people I hadn't seen in many years who had traveled to Washington to attend the conference.  It was great to have the opportunity to see and meet CARAS board members who live elsewhere.  I was delighted to see the awesome Catherine Gross, and to finally meet Kink-Aware Professionals founder Race Bannon. 

It is CARAS's tradition to present a case study as it's closing plenary, and my partner, who is a recovering sex addict, and I were the case, with a focus on healing sex addiction/compulsion and sexual sobriety in a polyamorous context.  We told our story of closing and then rebuilding our relationship after my partner revealed his addiction to me about nine months ago, our journey in therapy both together and separately, and how it was necessary to find our own path to wholeness again since the traditional prescription for sex addicts/compulsives and their partners doesn't work for us, at least not for me as a sex-positive advocate.  A local employed psychiatrist (whose name I can't use for fear of career repercussions for him) answered questions from the audience from a clinical perspective.

We were told that it is highly unusual to have a case presented where more than one partner participates.  That my partner and I were both there to tell our story together is a credit to my partner, who has made serving others who struggle with sexual addiction/compulsion and serving those who help them a part of his own recovery journey.  Today we are doing well together, and I couldn't be prouder of him.

I'm hoping that the CARAS conference will be a longer one in the future.  This one day meeting was scheduled the day before the American Psychological Association conference that is now going on in Washington, D.C., and the polyamory and bisexuality program I reference above will be presented there as well.  I learned that this is the second year that polyamory appeared somewhere on the APA conference program, and that is a big development indeed.  For years we couldn't get any mainstream organization that serves the psychology community to touch the topic.  The times, they are a'changing, and CARAS gets a good sized piece of the credit.

Calling All Therapists! CARAS Alternative Sexualities Conference August 3, 2011

I'm excited!  The Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities ("CARAS") is holding it's "4th Annual Alternative Sexualities Conference: Cultural Competencies, Clinical Issues, Research" here in DC on Wednesday, August 3, 2011, 9AM to 6PM.  My partner and I will be presenting as a case our experiences and challenges with sexual addiction/compulsion in a polyamorous relationship context, and psychiatrist Dr. Gary Wynn will provide a clinical perspective, and facilitate the conversation.  Of course, the conference is about a lot more than that.

In my polyamory advocacy and educational work, I frequently encounter people who have had a bad experience when seeking therapy from a counselor who is not savvy about alternative relationships.  Some are so unaware as to be biased against nonmonogamy and are convinced that monogamy is the only healthy way.  Not so!   So if you are sick of having to bring a therapist up to speed in order to get the help you and yours need, please pass this information along to any therapist you know who could benefit by attending. 

For more details, click the flyer and read on.  Registration link and continuing education credits follow below. 



 







 



The registration form is here.

Lunch is provided .

California MFT and LCSW Relicensure:
Course meets the qualifications for 8 hours of continuing education credit
for MFTs and/or LCSWs as required by the California Board of
Behavioral Sciences. CARAS’s PCE # is 4789.

Psychologists: CARAS is approved by the American Psychological
Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists.
CARAS maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

The Conference Schedule and Instructor credentials, including
relevant professional degree and discipline, current professional
position, and expertise in program content will be provided on the
CARAS website or by email request by July 21, 2011.

Polyamory Research and CARAS

I recently agreed to serve as a member of an Institutional Review Board ("IRB") at CARAS - the Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities. The polyamory IRB's role will be to review and approve research proposals applying NIH standards for researchers using human subjects. In doing so we can better assure that members of the polyamory community who are asked to participate in studies and provide research data can do so with confidence.

More specifically the polyamory IRB will be responsible for certifying that the proposed study will be conducted so as not to do any harm to the study participants. CARAS's goal is to be the important link between researchers and study groups made up of community volunteers so researchers can find the study participants they need and participants can be assured that there are adequate controls in place so they will be comfortable with what they are getting into.

I'm very excited about this. There is a lot of interest in this realm of research these days, and it's about time - we need to know a lot more about how our polyamorous relationships work and how they don't when they don't and why. We especially need more scientific evidence about how children do in poly families, since family courts tend to decide against poly parents absent concrete scientific evidence that children are not being put at risk.

CARAS has been working on putting the right people in place to launch itself into this vital work, and its directors are just about there. Approvals from NIH must be granted, i.e. proof that the various review boards for BDSM, swinging and polyamory are all suitably trained and qualified, and then we'll be up and running.

It is extremely gratifying to see that what was no more than a fond wish five years ago is coming to fruition, that there are both qualified researchers interested in studying our alternative sexuality communities, and that there are professionals out there who are putting together the approval apparatus to facilitate making it happen. In addition to CARAS and its work, as well as informal groups of researchers interested in studying swinging and BDSM, for at least a couple of years now there has been a very active yahoogroup focused on polyamory research where many academic researchers, student researchers, polyamory advocates and other interested persons continue to gather, network and share papers that they post to the files section of that group. You can find out about the poly researchers group here.