Professor Karen Carpenter is Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Psychology.  She is a Florida board certified clinical sexologist and a licensed counselling psychologist in Jamaica. She has been working in private relationship & sex therapy for the more than 20 years.

She is the Director for the Caribbean Sexuality Research Group (CSRG) Sexology Clinic, at the University Hospital of the West Indies and has lectured in psychology, research methods, gender & sexuality for more than 30 years. She hosts Love & Sex on facebook and is a guest expert on issues of gender and human sexuality and interpersonal relationships.

Professor Carpenter has worked with public, and private sector organisations in designing and conducting training & research. She is the author of Love & Sex: the Basics, Questioning Caribbean Jewish Identity, and editor of Interweaving Tapestries of Sexuality & Culture Vol 1 & 2, as well as co-author of Language Race & the Global Jamaican.

She conducts both in person and remote therapy sessions. International clients may use Zoom for appointments.

Why Sex & Relationship Therapy?

I became interested in sex and relationship therapy as a lecturer in Developmental Psychology and Interpersonal Dynamics. I was curious to know how adults, who had started out with positive and healthy sexual self-concepts as children, arrived at adulthood with so many negative conceptions of themselves sexually.  I saw this as a challenge to be addressed by psychology that would lead to more fulfilling lives in relationships with others.

Some of the issues that emerged from speaking with my students about their own journeys, revealed trauma and unhealthy sexual self-concepts. I travelled overseas to study and entered into the fascinating and complex world of human sexual and interpersonal relations. It has been my distinct honour and pleasure to work with the thousands of couples and individuals that have come to therapy in more than 2 decades. In my practice I have seen couples come back together after periods of great distress, while others have found ways ofseparating amicably. Other individuals recognise and celebrate who they are sexually, while many find peace after devastating trauma. The work of sharing in  the intimate lives of others is deeply humbling and encourages me to celebrate the power of change, the strength of the human spirit, and to maintain hope that healing is possible.