WHILE many pre-teens were poring over sappy romance novels, Karen Carpenter spent her childhood in a liberal household where she was given free reign to browse through her uncle’s Playboy collection at will and speak about sex at ease.
Given her knowledge of the subject, it is not surprising that she holds the distinct honour of being the only female clinical sexologist in the island today.
“I have known for a long time that this is what I wanted to do, so I am very happy that it is taking place at this time in my life,” said the doctor who has over 10 years’ experience as a psychologist.
Dr Carpenter has spent most of her adult life as an educator and researcher, and said it was her students’ attitude towards sex more than anything else that had finally gotten her to study clinical sexology.
“When I began working at the university with adults, I realised from many of my students that their life stories, their diaries, their journals that they would submit contained a lot of sexual dysfunction, sexual trauma and issues with sexuality and it concerned me,” said the doctor who lectures in developmental psychology at the University of the West Indies, Mona.
Dr Carpenter did not understand this, just as she couldn’t understand her classmates’ aversion to discussing sex-related matters during her high school years at the Catholic Convent of Mercy Academy (Alpha) which she attended.
“Having been brought up in a fairly liberal home where sexuality was not an issue and where sex was treated like any normal thing, I found that surprising. I suppose that so many other people did not grow up that way and so many other people expressed difficulties with their sexuality and with talking about sexuality or experiencing sexual pleasure,” she said during a recent interview with All Woman.
Dr Carpenter spent seven years searching for the perfect programme, before settling on a Florida-based programme that allowed her to be practical and enjoy hours of researching a subject matter which still remains taboo in some circles.
Her studies allowed her to share ideas with medical professionals from other countries, even if it was intensive and meant she had to come back to Jamaica 11 out of the 12 months she was there.
“Very little that a person tells you in therapy will shock you, you have seen it all by the time you are finished training,” she said.
As a clinical sexologist, Dr Carpenter provides therapy for transvestites, homosexuals, paedophiles, rapists, those with fetishes, and heterosexual couples who suffer from a myriad of sexual dysfunctions.
“I think I have probably worked with more transsexuals than anybody I know,” she said.
She said most of the sexual issues persons have can be psychological or medical, but either way, an unhealthy sex life can affect a relationship.
“You are withholding one of the more intimate, treasured, vulnerable experiences that two people can have together,” she said, even while noting that a few couples can enjoy a healthy relationship without sex.
“We say in sex therapy, if you look at the sex, you can tell everything you need to know about the relationship. The way people interact on an intimate level tells you a lot about the relationship — the demands that they make of each other, the extent to which they give into each other’s pleasures, the extent to which they respect each other’s boundaries,” she said.
The doctor is usually the last resort for most of her clients who would have visited other specialists before coming to her.
“Nobody can come to me without being referred, I do not accept clients who simply call up, so even if a client calls me I am going to say, you need to go to your doctor, you need to go to your gynaecologist or urologist, you need to be thoroughly checked out, you need to know there are no medical problems,” she said.
And given the nature of her job, it is not something she would encourage just about anyone to go into.
“It challenges your religious beliefs, it challenges your personal core beliefs and as a therapist, you are not allowed to judge, so you can’t judge the people coming to you with the difficulties they are coming to you with,” she said.
She added too, that as a therapist, she is not allowed to be sexually appealing while dealing with her clients.
“These are persons who are having sexual dysfunctions, you are not there to attract them sexually and you are not there to raise issues for their sexuality, you are there to help,” she explained.
Given her expertise in the area, the doctor has been a guest or co-host on a number of radio programmes to discuss issues surrounding human sexuality. She juggles such appearances with her main job of being a researcher and an educator. She also speaks Spanish, French and Hebrew and has studied in Mexico, the United Kingdom, the US, and Israel.
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