Last year Routledge invited me to create revised editions of two of my books, both of which had been published back in 2018: The Psychology of Sex (a second edition) and Rewriting the Rules (a third edition).

I found it difficult to decide whether to take up the invitation or not, mainly because so much has changed – in the world, and in me/us internally – since those books were published. In the end it felt important to revisit the books – to add something to them which would recognise and honour those changes, while not altering them too much – to recognise and honour the originals, the person who wrote them, and their continued usefulness to many, including myself.

New covers!

Here’s a preview of the two new covers. Regular readers may understand why I am particularly excited about them both (the new colour of The Psychology of Sex, and the new central image on Rewriting the Rules).

I’ll say more here in the coming months about the process and content of the new edition of Rewriting the Rules, which is out in September. It’s a huge one for me, given that it was the first edition of Rewriting the Rules that started the journey of becoming a non-fiction writer, including this website.

The Psychology of Sex

For now, the new edition of The Psychology of Sex is out this month.

Like Rewriting the Rules, the main changes that I made to The Psychology of Sex involved adding a new foreword, and a major new chapter at the end of the book. I also made some minor tweaks throughout to update references and reflect how things have shifted, particularly in relation to ever more polarised debates around sex and sexuality.

Un/Conscious Sex

The new final chapter is called ‘un/conscious sex’. It reflects my main areas of learning since 2018, particularly around trauma, plurality, the processes of bringing unconscious material into consciousness, and the role of sex and the erotic in all of this. This chapter also reflects wider cultural concerns around the prevelance of non-consensual sexual behaviour, and how we might address that at both a personal and collective level.

Particularly, the ‘un/conscious sex’ chapter explores how relational and cultural trauma massively constrain all of our capacities to navigate consent. It suggests ways in which we might use our erotic imaginations to become more conscious of all of our selves, and so approach sex – and everything – more consciously and consensually.

It felt very helpful, and meaningful, for me to bring all of this material together in one place, to convey my current understanding of: how our erotic and relational lives relate to trauma, how challening consent is for all of us under these conditions, and what we might therefore do to expand our capacity for care and connection with ourselves, others, and the world.

These are themes that I return to – beyond sex – in the final chapter of the new edition of Rewriting the Rules. They will likely be at the heart of all my work in future.

Check it out

Check out The Psychology of Sex, for more information about the book. The full contents of the third edition is as follows:

Foreword to the new edition

1 Psychology and sex

2 Sex and sexuality

3 ‘Proper’ sex

4 ‘Normal’ sex

5 Sex debates

6 Un/conscious sex

Further resources