Contemporary Sexuality - July 2008 - (Page 3)

Member Spotlight Charley Ferrer, MA, DHS (Staten Island, N.Y.) Member Spotlight is a monthly column offering an opportunity for AASECT members to get to know more about each other. Each month, a different member’s story will be introduced. If you would like to recommend someone to be interviewed for this column, please contact Hani Miletski, PhD, MSW, Membership Steering Committee chair, at Hani@DrMiletski.com. C harley Ferrer joined AASECT after meeting several organization members in Montreal, where she presented on Psychopathology or Alternative Lifestyles at the World Congress of Sexology in 2005. Ferrer presented at the recent AASECT conference in New Orleans on Latina Sexuality — Groundbreaking Research Outlining the Influence of Culture, Religion and Machismo on Spanish Women’s Sexuality. She began her career in the mental health field “by accident.” After six years in the military and a dead-end job, Ferrer returned to college in her 30s to study business. In her last semester, she took eight credits in psychology. “Within two weeks, I fell in love with psychology and therapeutic practices and immediately signed up for a master’s program in Counseling Psychology,” she says. During her master’s degree program, Ferrer took the only course offered on sexuality. She was given a “real life” couple to work with, who happened to be into alternative lifestyles. “The advice I gave my ‘patients’ was considered inappropriate because I encouraged them in their desires,” Ferrer says. “That’s when I realized there was more to sexual behavior than even my professors and classmates understood. I felt as a therapist, it wasn’t my place to judge a couple’s sexual preference but to help them accept themselves and provide them with alternatives, both traditional and modern and let them decide for themselves what’s right for them.” Ferrer went on to pursue a doctorate in Human Sexuality from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, where she also obtained a clinical sexologist certification, erotologist certification, as well as a sex educator degree. She received a clinical hypnotherapy certification through Tacoma Community College (Tacoma, Wash.), and she is currently working on incorporating massage and chakra work into her practice. Ferrer developed a new therapeutic modality, Dominance & Submission Therapy, to assist individuals who are into alternative lifestyles in enhancing their self-acceptance and their rela- tionships. “BDSM is considered an alternative lifestyle and not pathological within the community and individuals I treat,” she says. Ferrer works with several Spanish organizations as well as television and radio stations, including de Analeh TV show and Dominicano Entrerate radio show in Connecticut “to bring more education on sexual health to the Latino community and dispel many of the old taboos and erroneous information still plaguing our community.” She also co-produces and hosts the first bilingual show on relationships and sexual health called Pleasure (formerly Caliente with Dr. Charley Ferrer) seen throughout New York City on community television. Pleasure was nominated for Best TV Talk Show by BronxNext in 2007. Ferrer has been lecturing throughout the United States and Latin America for the past 10 years on relationships, sexual health and sexual empowerment. Her first book, The W.I.S.E. Journal for the Sensual Woman won the Best Self-Help Book award in 2002, and her latest book The Latina Kama Sutra was nominated for the Best Book on Sexuality for 2007 award by Independent Publishers Association. Altogether, Ferrer has written five books, including a play in Spanish. She is currently working on two other books: Body & Soul: An Intimate Look into Black Men’s Sexuality and The Latin Lover. In addition, she writes for several newspapers, magazines and websites. In 2006, Ferrer founded the Institute of Pleasure, with offices in New York and Latin America. The Institute provides therapeutic services and education to the community and other professionals, including pro bono counseling to individuals with HIV, and conducts research on sexual behavior. This year, the institute is hosting the first “Pleasure Awards” for educators in the field of sexology who have helped promote health, sensuality and pleasure. “The only Latina doctor of human sexuality in the United States,” and often referred to by the media as the Latina Dr. Ruth, Ferrer has been deemed one of the 19 groundbreaking Latinas in the United States by the National Association for Latina Leaders for her work in sexology. Ferrer is a single mother of a 20-year-old son. She admits to having an obsession with knowledge, and makes herself learn something new every few months. For example, “I’ve learned how to fly a Cessna airplane but needing to be in control, I switched to helicopters. Last November, I learned basic French. This month, I’ve decided to learn how to play the drums, and for the summer I’ll be learning how to parasail. I believe life is too short to not experience as much as you can and explore as much as you can.” — Hani Miletski “The advice I gave my ‘patients’ was considered inappropriate because I encouraged them in their desires. I felt as a therapist, it wasn’t my place to judge a couple’s sexual preference but to help them accept themselves and provide them with alternatives, both traditional and modern and let them decide for themselves what’s right for them.” July 2008 Vol. 42, No. 7 | www.aasect.org Contemporary Sexuality 3 http://www.aasect.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Contemporary Sexuality - July 2008

Contemporary Sexuality - July 2008 Contents Member Spotlight Quick Hits: Sex in the News News of Members

Contemporary Sexuality - July 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.