Domeena Renshaw

Prior to coming to the United States in the 1960s, Domeena Renshaw worked as a surgeon and physician in a small mission hospital in South Africa's Zululand. She had been trained in urology and gynecology as well as neuropsychiatry, a solid medical education that prepared her well for understanding the connections between psychological and physical factors involved in psychiatric disorders. AFter completing her psychiatric residency at Loyola University in Chicago, she joined the faculty and then started a premier sex therapy clinic.

For the past thirty years, Renshaw has seen thousands of couples for various sexual dysfunctions and has trained thousands of mental health professionals in methods of brief sex therapy. Her unique program consists of seven sessions that combine sex education and conjoint and individual therapy.

Renshaw published her ideas in a best-selling book, Seven Weeks to Better Sex, that garnered worldwide notoriety for her systematic, integrative, and efficient approach. Earlier in her career, before settling on sex therapy as her specialty, she had also written books about hyperactive children and treating incest victims.

To meeet Domeena Renshaw is to encounter a bundle of energy. With her distinctive South African accent, diminutive size, and causual manner in which she talks calmly about the most explicit aspects of sexual behavor, there is little doubt in our minds that she is a unique presence in the fields of mental health and couple therapy. [from The Mummy at the Dining Room Table, by Jeffrey A. Kottler and Jon Carlson (2004)]