Aims

General aims
The aim of the course on clinical aspects of paraphilias and of the deviance is to deal with central aspects of clinical psychosexology and psychology related to unusual, deviant, and pathologi-cal sexual behaviours.

Specific aims
Specific aims are teaching basic principles and the core techniques useful for conducting the interview and the intake sessions with a patient affected by paraphilias and with the victims of the sexual deviance.

Knowledge and understanding
At the end of the course, to students will be able to demonstrate knowledge and comprehension skills relat-ed to the complex filed of paraphilias. Moreover, students will acquire the necessary competencies for as-sessing the quality of the delicate interview related to the topic.

Applying knowledge and understanding
At the end of this course, the students will be able to conduct a first interview/intake session, to formulate a case accor-ding to the data collected during these interviews and the competencies necessary for develop-ing a therapeutic plan coherent with the diagnosis and the formulation of the clinical cases of deviances, paraphilias and unusual sexual be-haviours.

Making judgements
Half of the course will be based on lectures and half will consist in group discussions of actual clinical sessions. At the end of the course, students will be able to develop reliable hypotheses about: what to investigate during a first interview/intake session according to the different clinical features of the deviant and paraphilic patient; how to make sense of the communications of a difficult patient and of the thoughts and emotions stirred up by the deviant or abused pa-tient into the therapist in this particular field; how to deal with missing information or other difficulties encountered during the interview; how to integrate these data in a diagnostic picture and in coherent and comprehensive case formulation.

Communication skills
The student will be particularly able in communicating knowledge by being able to illustrate the processes that led to their acquisition to specialists and non-specialist interlocutors in the field of clinical psychosexol-ogy. At the end of the course, the students will be able to explain how they would choose the kind of first interview to conduct according to the different clinical situations related to deviances, how they would de-cide if and what to inquire and how they deve-lop their hypotheses about the patient’s functioning and prob-lems on the basis of the characteristics in communica-tions, behaviours, emotions and problems of the pa-tients abused or abusing.

Learning skills
During the course, the students will be given a set of references by which they will be able to deepen their understan-ding of how to deal with specific and complex clinical situations in deviances and paraphilias.