# David Schnarch



## umbluu (Jan 24, 2020)

Dear All,
I am not sure this is the best place for this topic (self-help archives may be another possibility), but since Schnarch is a sex therapist, perhaps it is. What is your opinion of David Schnarch and his works?

I used to be very fond of his theories, but eventually my feelings became mixed. I still think "Passionate Marriage" is great, but it is great in part because at the time of writing Schnarch was more of a regular therapist and not a great guru, did not charge a truckload of money and therefore his clients were more regular people. Then later he became the therapist mostly for the rich and famous and it seems to me that some degree of narcissism got normalized in his mind (at best) or rubbed onto him (at worst). I am not saying his theories are narcissistic, but I guess it is fair to say that they may resonate with people with narcissistic traits and may be misinterpreted and misused by them.

I tried to get my wife more enthusiastic about him, but did not have much luck... Once upon a time I sent her a link to one of his articles in Psychology Today, and in the comments Schnarch got into some unpleasant fight with some commenters along he lines of "do not express your uneducated opinions unless you are a therapist"... So she was turned off by that...

I may have other things to add, but this is probably enough to start the discussion and see if anyone is interested...


----------



## Laurentium (May 21, 2017)

I like his books, especially "Passionate Marriage", and some of "Brain talk" is also useful, though it's a bit padded out.

I met him and talked with him. (He died in 2020). He was _really_ confrontational. I have a fond memory of him going in front of a room full of psychoanalytic sex therapists, and telling us that "sensate focus" was BS. That was hilarious to see their faces. He was also really dismissive about attachment theory, which it can be argued is the most scientifically validated theory for couple work.

Having seen him do a role-play, I have a suspicion he might have been pretty effective "in the room" with clients.

Would you care to summarise what you see as his theories?


----------



## Young at Heart (Jan 6, 2015)

umbluu said:


> What is your opinion of David Schnarch and his works?


I am a big fan of Dr. David Schnarch's works. 

His first major work, a Passionate Marriage was one of the hardest books I have ever read. I have multiple Graduate degrees. I have read some of the most boring, god-awful graduate science and engineering textbooks in print. Passionate Marriage ranks near the top of the books I had to push through to finish.

His approach is typically confrontational and challenges common sense. But it also makes you think and question your perceptions. I like that, as often problems are much more complex than they seem.

My feeling is that the Crucible, Intimacy and Desire, and Mind Mapping, were all, much more readable books (and much shorter). As he became more famous, he learned what people who bought self-help marriage books wanted to read and still confronted their thoughts provocatively.

When my wife and I were trying to rebuild our sex starved marriage, it was a passage out of Passionate Marriage that allowed my wife to say she would go to a sex therapist. The passage went something like; there is no right amount of anything in a marriage, everything needs to be negotiated and that can change over time. There is no right amount of chocolate ice cream a week after dinner. There is no right amount of hours watching football on the weekend and there is no right amount of sex. Just because a couple argues over the amount of sex, does not mean that one of them is broken and needs to be fixed.

With the thought that there is no "right" amount of sex per week or month and that if two people in a marriage don't agree on a common number, one of them is not in need of getting fixed, she agreed to marriage counseling with a nationally know PhD marriage counselor and board certified sex therapist. That was the best money I have ever spent.

During sex therapy to reconcile a sex starved marriage, I explained to the ST that I have read Passionate Marriage, and the ST was amazed and wanted to know why and what I thought of it. She had read it in some of her training and even wrote a paper on parts of it. She was amazed that someone who was not in the profession had read the whole thing.

I found his later books much better and easier to read. In fact as part of our "tune-up" prior to retirement, my wife and I would each read a chapter in Intimacy and Desire, record our thoughts as to things that resonated with us, and then discuss the chapter each week on a night were we agreed that sex was not an option. At the time we went to a regular marriage couselor as our problems were not primarily related to sex or lack of sex. The MC suggested we keep that up after our MC sessions stopped. The last book we read in chapters together and talked about was the Gottmans' book the Art and Science of Love.

Having taken lots of science and engineering courses, I viewed Schnarch and others as providing insights and perspectives that may not be universally true. For example, Newton's laws of motion work well for most things, but we know that quantum mechanics is real, we know that matter can behave in some ways like waves and in some ways like particles. There are different frameworks or "rules of science" that allow us to examine and simplistically explain things in general, knowing that there are limitations to those explanations. 

For me his insights into marriage as a constantly changing set of relationships, with emotional growth occurring at different rates between the partners, that "love, sexual desire and intimacy" are all related to his concepts of self-differentiation, negotiations, vulnerability, calming your nervous heart, pushing yourself past your limits to grow for your partner and yourself, and are concepts that helped me and helped me save and grow my marriage. I viewed Schnarch and other authors as also providing "rules of thumb" or screening perspectives in how to view and explain complex relationships.

Having said that, there are other authors out there that have also made a huge impact on my thinking about relationships. The include: M.W. Davis, Glover, Chapman, Gottmans, and Sue Johnson.

Oh, and yes, Sensate Focus exercises were a big part in saving my sex starved marriage and reintroducing touch into my relationship with my wife. So I don't agree with everything Schnarch believes.

In fact there two areas where my wife absolutely dislikes (hates) the concepts promoted by Schnarch. Once she told me she wanted more intimacy in our marriage. I gave her a passage in Passionate Marriage about intimacy exercises where he suggested kissing with your eyes open and later moving up to orgasming with your eyes open. She told me "no thank you," she didn't want that much intimacy. She really did not want to be that vultnerable and could not calm her heart sufficiently to do those things. Also, in Intimacy and Desire, near the end of the book, Schnarch presents a short-cut to jump-starting intimacy through oral sex (B.J.'s and dining at the Y). My wife will not and has never given me a BJ and thinks all forms of oral sex are disgusting. She thinks it is vile, disgusting, and filthy. Oh well, her loss (and unfortunately mine as well).



umbluu said:


> I am not saying his theories are narcissistic, but I guess it is fair to say that they may resonate with people with narcissistic traits and may be misinterpreted and misused by them.


That is an interesting comment. Not sure where it comes from. I hope I am neither narcissistic nor misinterpreting his advice.

But yes, I would like to hear more about what some people think of his body of works.


----------



## umbluu (Jan 24, 2020)

Thank you, Laurentium
what I found most interesting?.. For example, the concepts of other- and self-validated intimacy. His stance on attachment takes it a bit too far for my taste, but in some sense he is correct - one cannot really wait until the secure attachment is formed to take next steps. One can wait for a very long time, and not learn to be vulnerable anyway. 
Wanting to want or not wanting to want resonated quite a lot.
He seems to advocate for higher level of responsibility for oneself... Or at least I perceive him this way.
Then there were things that he borrowed from somebody else and put together, such as three styles of having sex (some sort of tender love, trance/ focus on sensations and role play... I saw them in somebody else's work too, under slightly different names), I also enjoyed his discussions on the concept of fu**ing.
In general, I take his writings as more of a theory of intimate relationships, not just theory on sex.

As for narcissistic traits, it seems to me that entitled people may interpret his writings as a suggestion to be even more entitled, at least when we are talking about feeling entitled for more. And bulldoze their partners. Which a therapist would confront, but what about those doing it at home?  But I do not have enough statistics - I do not know many people who are entitled and have read Schnarch. Am I projecting my own problems here?.. I do not know. My therapist does not think I am a narcissist, but my natural way of being is avoidant attachment. Working on it... So I can come across as entitled to not do something, but feeling entitled to consistently demand somebody do something (sexual or otherwise) is hard for me.

I find it interesting that you, Young a Heart, felt Passionate Marriage is difficult to read... Crucible was more difficult for me. Exactly because that was a text for professional therapists and I am not one. As for Intimacy and Desire, I did not find him reframing his theories this way any more helpful than the original Passionate Marriage, and have been put off by this marketing-y feel. Everything is TM... I understand, he wants to protect his intellectual property, but still, most therapist authors do not go to such lengths. 
By the way, based on what you said, I believe we have similar educational background...


----------



## TexasMom1216 (Nov 3, 2021)

umbluu said:


> it seems to me that entitled people may interpret his writings as a suggestion to be even more entitled


That's kinda how entitled people are though, I think. One can hardly hold the author responsible for how selfish people interpret his writings, since regardless of their actual content, a selfish and entitled person will likely interpret things to their own advantage. 

I'm not familiar with any of these writings but am fascinated to read what you guys think of them. So thanks for that.


----------



## OdliDPrincess (3 mo ago)

Love the book too


----------



## umbluu (Jan 24, 2020)

---That's kinda how entitled people are though, I think. One can hardly hold the author responsible for how selfish people interpret his writings, since regardless of their actual content, a selfish and entitled person will likely interpret things to their own advantage. 

You are right... I guess I was comparing not more entitled and less entitled people / clients, I was comparing approaches to therapy. Something attachment-based, or anything that, in Schnarch's words, aims at the lowest common denominator (something that does not trigger anybody's anxieties or unfinished business), has less potential to be misused by entitled people. On the other hand, maybe those have potential to be misused by somebody entitled to not get out of one's comfort zone instead.

---I'm not familiar with any of these writings but am fascinated to read what you guys think of them. So thanks for that. 

You can always become familiar with these writings.


----------



## TexasMom1216 (Nov 3, 2021)

umbluu said:


> You can always become familiar with these writings.


Nah. I have enough stress.


----------



## ccpowerslave (Nov 21, 2020)

I bought “Passionate Marriage” because folks on here had said his work was good. I tried reading it on a plane and probably pissed off the flight attendant because there weren’t enough mini Jack Daniels bottles to get me through it.

There might be ok ideas lurking under all the verbose descriptions and metaphors but I’ll never know.

Give me the TL;DR version and maybe.


----------



## Cletus (Apr 27, 2012)

ccpowerslave said:


> I bought “Passionate Marriage” because folks on here had said his work was good. I tried reading it on a plane and probably pissed off the flight attendant because there weren’t enough mini Jack Daniels bottles to get me through it.
> 
> There might be ok ideas lurking under all the verbose descriptions and metaphors but I’ll never know.
> 
> Give me the TL;DR version and maybe.


 I hear ya. In my career, I have had to read and understand complex papers and articles with titles like "Disambiguated Glommable Expression Templates Reintroduced". But Schnarch? That was as impenetrable as the neutron absorber surrounding a nuclear reactor.


----------



## ccpowerslave (Nov 21, 2020)

Cletus said:


> I hear ya. In my career, I have had to read and understand complex papers and articles with titles like "Disambiguated Glommable Expression Templates Reintroduced". But Schnarch? That was as impenetrable as the neutron absorber surrounding a nuclear reactor.


Same. I got an A in scientific writing my last semester at university, an an A- in creative writing at the same school; I’m not a slouch. With that said I found that book to be borderline James Joyce level of impenetrable.


----------



## Personal (Jan 16, 2014)

ccpowerslave said:


> I found that book to be borderline James Joyce level of impenetrable.


His ribald letters to his wife leave no ambiguity.


----------



## No Longer Lonely Husband (Nov 3, 2015)

Laurentium said:


> I like his books, especially "Passionate Marriage", and some of "Brain talk" is also useful, though it's a bit padded out.
> 
> I met him and talked with him. (He died in 2020). He was _really_ confrontational. I have a fond memory of him going in front of a room full of psychoanalytic sex therapists, and telling us that "sensate focus" was BS. That was hilarious to see their faces. He was also really dismissive about attachment theory, which it can be argued is the most scientifically validated theory for couple work.
> 
> ...


My FWW and I read the book Passioate Marriage and worked our way through it with our MC over course of several months. Not an easy book to read, but helpful


----------



## Laurentium (May 21, 2017)

To me, one of his most important concepts is "mind mapping". The idea that people really try to figure each other out. People are not naive. They may get it wrong, but they form complex theories about each other's motivations. They read each other. 

If one partner has said something to the other, sometimes therapists ask questions like "how does that make you feel?" and I might do that too. But that has drawbacks. Often I am asking, "_what do you think your partner's reason was for saying that?" _and if they say "to hurt me" I'll ask "_and why do they want to do that?" _

The replies (whether right or wrong) can be illuminating for the partner (the one who originally said it)


----------



## umbluu (Jan 24, 2020)

Thank you Laurentium,
Yes, "mind mapping" is cool as well. Is it just me, but I interpreted this part more along the lines of "for long-term partners mind mapping is usually correct, so for example one does not ask some questions not because one is afraid of uncertainty of what the response may be, but because one knows the response will be negative"?..

---If one partner has said something to the other, sometimes therapists ask questions like "how does that make you feel?" and I might do that too. But that has drawbacks. Often I am asking, "_what do you think your partner's reason was for saying that?" _and if they say "to hurt me" I'll ask "_and why do they want to do that?" _
The replies (whether right or wrong) can be illuminating for the partner (the one who originally said it)

I understand this may be too much to ask, but if you have time, and if there are no recognizable details, could you expand this example several steps further?


----------



## Laurentium (May 21, 2017)

umbluu said:


> I understand this may be too much to ask, but if you have time, and if there are no recognizable details, could you expand this example several steps further?


It's a generic example, not anyone particular. I'm trying to push the person as to their ideas about their partner's motivations. They nearly always have some ideas.


----------



## umbluu (Jan 24, 2020)

Something on another thread made me think about something that I never quite figured out with Schnarch... What if both partners feel equally entitled to their positions? 
I know, there kind of was an example of that in one of the books. But there Schnarch broke the stalemate by demonstrating that the LD partner was misrepresenting their position in an important way ("but you actually like f***ing"). But what if no one misrepresents their position and stands firm? Sure, people could divorce, but it is implied that something could be done with his approach, but I do not quite get what exactly.
I also find his claim that almost nobody ever walked out of his office hard to believe, especially taking into account how provosative or confrontational he was... Or was there some automatic selection process involved, especially after he published his books? Only the people who can tolerate his approach agreed to exposing themselves to it in the first place?


----------



## Julie's Husband (Jan 3, 2022)

Laurentium said:


> To me, one of his most important concepts is "mind mapping". The idea that people really try to figure each other out. People are not naive. They may get it wrong, but they form complex theories about each other's motivations. They read each other.


Guess I'm a bit on the simplistic side. I do not try to delve beyond the words and actions. It took a conversation with my wife after about 43 years of knowing each other to learn that we did not know the other's thoughts.

For instance, my wife comes from a male dominant social strata and expect men to be in control. I am very egalitarian and she saw my desire to let her have a say in things as being undecided. It took us 43 years to really understand that.


----------

