February letter 2025
In Europe, spring is both hesitating, budding and blooming all depending on where you dwell on the European continent.
Even in Norway, the rays from the sun add a little warmth to our cheeks. This yearly joy brings energy and vitality.
EFS has, as I see it, gained vitality over the last years. Many plans and visions that have hibernated in stacks, shelves and document files, may just come to wake up in the months to come.
Now with budding spring, I see what spring might bring:
More content, more accreditation, more validation, more nuances in sexological education.
For many months the WAS Professional Committee for Education and Training in Clinical Sexology (2021 – 2025) has worked to map professional sexological educational programs all over the world. The committee is working tirelessly to complete a journal issue dedicated to sexological education with supplements from all over the globe.
That’s both joyful and promising!
They find the areas of professional training in clinical sexology to be:
- Education in basic sexology;
- Training in sexological counseling;
- Training in sex therapy;
- Training in clinical sexology for psychotherapists (psychologists and doctors);
- Education in medical sexology/sexual medicine.
Our field is a complex one, it is multiprofessional, interdisciplinary and directed both to teaching, clinical work, research, human rights and sexual health promotion.
Naturally this diversity in the profession, calls for diversity in education and training.
At our last board meeting, we agreed to search into our stacks, shelves and document files to see what is already done. I think a lot of good material will surface.
At the same time, since we want to offer this to our members, it is of great interest for us to get feedback in the shape of wishes and needs in the fields of sexological education.
We do realize that EFS cannot run any university in the foreseeable future, but we might just be able to:
- Give accreditation to existing programs that in turn render the teaching programs and their graduates the right to add EFS accreditation to their diplomas.
- Construct curricula to send to education institutions around Europe for them to implement and create their EFS accredited programs
- Send these curricula to governments, health politicians and bureaucrats underscoring the need to integrate sexological expertise in their healthcare systems.
There are few if any, healthcare system that acknowledges sexological education. It is a task for all of us to drop insights to healthcare systems all over Europe in order to build more understanding as to what we can supply to public health.
Remember this Latin proverb: The drop excavates the stone, not by its force, but by its constant dripping.
Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad
EFS president
