Programme

NACS 2022 conference will take place from September 29th through October 2nd, 2022.

Programme overview

Thursday, September 29th, 2022

Pre-conference Workshop "The Pleasure Prescription: A Surprising Approach to Healing Sexual Pain" (click the title for more details)

9.00-16.00 NACSAC meeting (venue at Tartu University Library, W. Struve Street 1, Tartu - meeting room "Kursi")


Friday, September 30th, 2022

9.00-11.00 NACS Board meeting (venue at Tartu University Library, W. Struve Street 1, Tartu - meeting room "Kursi")

12.00 Opening of the conference (venue at Vanemuise Theatre Concert Hall, Vanemuise Street 6, Tartu)

12.30 Keynote speech Silva Neves (UK) - A sex-positive approach to working with compulsive sexual behaviours

13.15 Keynote speech Charmaine Borg (NL) - Sexual excitation and disgust

14.00 LUNCH

Session I

15.00 Osmo Kontula (FI) - Why women have difficulties to have orgasms? - A large-scale qualitative study

15.20 Dee Hartmann (US)- Physiologic response of the pelvic floor muscles during female orgasm: a pilot study


15.40 Helle Gerbild (DK) - Communication about physical activity to reduce vascular erectile dysfunction – A qualitative interview study among men in cardiac rehabilitation

16.00-17.30 NACS General Assembly

17.30 Coffee and posters

Birgitte Schantz Laursen (DK) - Offering cryopreservation of semen to transgender persons assigned male at birth - qualitative interviews on motivation and attitudes

Gerd Hilde Lunde (NO) - Norwegian Social Educator students’ attitudes towards addressing sexual health

Birgit Malken (EE) - Is a decade enough to change perceptions of sexual misconduct? A follow-up study on Estonian university students

Helle Gerbild (DK) - Physical activity to reduce vascular erectile dysfunction - development of a complex intervention

19.30-21.30 Welcome reception


Saturday, October 1st, 2022

Session II

9.00 Corina Pennanen-Iire (FI) - Management of chronic genital pain: penile, vestibulitis and vaginismus

9.30 Lena Nyhus (DK) - The ethics of circumcision: building sex lives on pain and loss

10.00 Anneli Rønes (NO) - A presentation of the first ever national surveys on sexuality education in Norway

10.30 Maria Murumaa-Mengel (EE) - Perspectives on porn literacies from Estonian educators, porn users and OnlyFans creators

11.00-11.30 Coffee and poster viewing

Session III

11.30 Birgitte Schantz Laursen (DK) - Sexuality in people with dementia

12.00 Suzann Larsdotter (SE) - "You just assume they're completely dead below the belt" - Care workers' attitudes towards and experiences surrounding elder sexuality

12.20 Minna Törnävä (FI) - Men’s experiences of the impact of penile cancer surgery on sexual life

12.40 Poster viewing and presentations (poster area)

13.00 LUNCH

Session IV

14.00 Elo Süld (EE) - Sufi narratives of intimacy: heavenly and not so heavenly

14.30 Anna Kolster and Patricia Thesleff (FI) - Serie Prevention Project in Finland

15.00 Wenche Fjeld (NO) - Sexual health and intellectual and developmental disability

Parallel session 14.00-15.30 - Workshop: Pleasure for kids? What, when and how to teach kids about sexual pleasure? For more information on the workshop, click here

15.30 Coffee break

15.50-17.20 Keynote speech Dee Hartmann and Elizabeth Wood (US) - The Pleasure Prescription: from Pain to Pleasure

19.30 Gala Dinner


Sunday, October 2nd, 2022

Session V

9.00 Annika Tamme (EE)- Media representations of childhood sexual abuse and integrating survivors’ experiences into media guidelines

9.30 Meelis Sütt (EE) Female sexuality and pain: some thoughts about psychosexual aspects of psychogenetic painfulness of female genitalia

10.00 Anneli Rønes (NO) - A presentation of the first ever national survey on Norway’s youth health clinics

10.30 Coffee break

Session VI and closing remarks

10.45 Annika Tamme (EE) - Mind over matter - can imagined social scenarios change state sexual desire in people up to the age of 85?

11.15 Birgitte Schantz Laursen (DK) - The influence of lichen sclerosus on women’s sexual health seen from within a biopsychosocial perspective – a mixed method study

11.45 Closing remarks

12.00 LUNCH and goodbyes

Please note - there might still be some upcoming minor changes in the programme due to unforeseen circumstances!


Keynote speakers


Silva neves

A sex-positive approach to working with compulsive sexual behaviours

Compulsive sexual behaviours are largely misunderstood by clinicians. Yet, more and more people are looking for therapy to address sexual behaviours that feel out of control, causing problems in their lives.

This lecture will focus on understanding the complex clinical presentations of clients who struggle with compulsive sexual behaviours from a sex-positive and evidence-based approach, and beyond the reductive thinking of the ‘sex addiction’ mindset.

Silva will present how to make a sexology-informed assessment and the treatment pathway to help clients more efficiently and ethically.


Silva Neves is a COSRT-accredited and UKCP-registered psychosexual and relationship psychotherapist, and a trauma psychotherapist. He is a Pink Therapy Clinical Associate.

Silva is a COSRT-accredited clinical supervisor. He is a Course Director for CICS (Contemporary Institute of Clinical Sexology)

Silva is the author of Compulsive Sexual Behaviours, A Psycho-Sexual Treatment Guide for Clinicians (2021, Routledge).

Website:

https://www.silvaneves.co.uk

www.sexpositivityUK.com

Facebook: Silva Neves – Psychotherapy

Twitter: @SilvaNeves3

Instagram: @silvanevespsychotherapy

Charmaine Borg

Sexual excitation and disgust are two opposing forces. While disgust is functional in preventing contagion from pathogens and is essential for survival, it also plays a role in various psychopathologies like sexual problems. Sexual arousal is necessary for the motivational force leading to reward and sexual pleasure but it may also impair our judgment. In this talk I will discuss about the impact of sexual arousal on weakening disgust - allowing us to enjoy sex, and, how disgust weakens sexual arousal - a relevant finding for when people may feel under sexual threat. Studies utilizing various methodologies will be described.

This research line offers important new angles for future research. In this talk, the theoretical underpinning of this work and clinical implications will be discussed. Further, studies that are in the pipelines will also be outlined opening the floor for discussion.


Charmaine Borg is an assistant professor at the University of Groningen. She has earned a master's degree from the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, majoring in CBT and Women’s Mental Health. Charmaine completed her doctorate studies at the Experimental Psychology and Clinical Psychopathology, in 2013. In her research she used various methodologies – from Functional MRI, to psychophysiological measurements and diary studies. Her research has been well captured by (premier) media agents. Her research focuses on sexual excitation and sexual inhibitors. She has been accredited as a psycho-sexologist and she is currently a Management Committee Member of the European Sexual Medicine Network and an Education Committee member of the European Society of Sexual Medicine.

DEE HARTMANN, PT, DPT

Practicing physical therapy for over 40 years, Dee is an internationally recognized author, teacher, and speaker on the treatment of chronic vulvar pain. For over 27 years she devoted the majority of her private practice to the treatment of women with chronic vulvar pain, sexual dysfunction, chronic pelvic pain, and bowel and bladder disorders.


As an active member of the APTA’s Section on Women’s Health, she was the originating chairman of the Task Force responsible for the creation of the Certificate of Achievement for Pelvic Physical Therapy (CAPP) and served on the Vulvar Pain Task Force. She is a fellow and past member of the Executive Counsel of the International Society for the Study of Vulvovaginal Disease (ISSVD) and is a past President and counselor for the North American Chapter of the ISSVD; a current member and past board member of the International Pelvic Pain Society (IPPS); a current member and past board member of the National Vulvodynia Association (NVA); and is a member of the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health (ISSWSH).



In 2017, she and Elizabeth Wood, MSW, CSSE, BC, co-founded VulvaLove and the Center for Genital Health and Education. Their focus is normalizing vulvar diversity and reframing the conversation around desire, arousal, pain, and pleasure. In July 2021, she and Elizabeth published, “The Pleasure Prescription: A Surprising Approach to Healing Sexual Pain”. Dee is happily married to the love of her life, is the mother of 5 wonderful, grown children, and Gramma to 8 glorious grandchildren.

ELIZABETH WOOD, MSW, CSSE, BC

Elizabeth holds a master’s degree in social work and was a sex therapist for many years. She is a sought-after speaker and guest lecturer at multi-disciplinary medical meetings who infuses pleasure into all of her talks. She is a member of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT) and the Sexual and Gender Health Collaborative of the Front Range.

Elizabeth is a Certified Tantra Educator, Somatic Sex Educator and Sexological Bodyworker allowing her to work masterfully with her clients utilizing a hands-on approach. Her most recent certification, and, as she says, her last, is as an Erotic Blueprint(TM) Coach enabling her to help clients dive deeper into understanding the keys that unlock their unique turn-on.


Together with Dee Hartmann, she co-founded VulvaLove, Inc. to educate people about genital diversity. Elizabeth and Dee also co-founded the Center for Genital Health and Education where they conduct and support ground-breaking, pleasure-forward research.