Institute of Substantive Sexology
The highest standards of rigour in the services we provide, combined with the closest and most caring warmth in the way we treat people. Academic rigour and human warmth: not incompatible — essential.
Visit isesus.orgThe Institute of Substantive Sexology strives to offer the highest and most demanding quality in the services it provides, accompanied by the closest and most caring warmth in the way it treats people.
We were founded with the conviction that academic rigour and human warmth are not incompatible, but complementary and essential for accompanying people in their exploration of sexuality.
ISESUS is born as an academic institution dedicated to the development, production and dissemination of Substantive Sexology.
Launch of the first specialised postgraduate programme, a benchmark in in-person sexological training.
Creation of the publishing imprint to publish and disseminate the theoretical corpus of Substantive Sexology.
Deep renewal of team and offering. Launch of the Online Academy and new training and intervention programmes.
Incorporation of individual and couples therapy services, in-person and online.
To be a factory of research, creation and innovation in Substantive Sexology.
To be an academic benchmark for a Substantive Sexology built on rigour, quality and warmth.
To contribute to a sexology that dialogues with other disciplines, importing and exporting knowledge.
To be an active agent promoting cooperation and synergy between the sexes.
To help build a new sexual order based on synergy, responsibility, justice and reason.
To harmonise feminist ethical purposes with sexological scientific knowledge.
Substantive Sexology is a way of understanding and studying sex that starts from a fundamental idea: sex is not merely an activity, a set of practices, or a health topic. Sex is a constitutive dimension of the person. It is not something we simply "do" — it is something that forms part of who we are.
"It is not only something we do: it is something that shapes our biography."
Much of the discourse on sexuality focuses on behaviours, risks and dysfunctions. Substantive Sexology does not ignore those aspects, but does not start there. It starts by understanding the phenomenon at its base — before speaking of "sexual problems", it is necessary to understand what sex is as a human reality.
Substantive Sexology starts from a nuclear thesis: sex is a constitutive fact of living reality. It is not an addition, nor a behaviour, nor a preference. It is structure.
How does one come to be male or female? Two processes that are commonly confused must be carefully distinguished.
Who do I find desirable? Being male or female is not enough. Desire is oriented.
How do we co-exist sexually? Sex does not culminate in identity or orientation. It unfolds in relation.
The Substantive Sexology map does not revolve around "problems", "behaviours" or "sexual health". It revolves around sex as a noun: as constitutive, evolutionary and differentiated reality. All of this traversed by an epistemological plane that critically reviews historical notions of sex.
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