Dr. Genevieve Marcel is a writer and theorist whose work is concerned with what desire reveals about the self. Her writing examines the existential dimensions of erotic life: the way wanting and being wanted reorganize identity, the fear of being known in intimacy and the structures of recognition that shape how people move toward and away from one another.
Her books constitute the first systematic theoretical manuscript of existential sex therapy for women as a formal discipline.
The Work
Her first book, Existential Sex Therapy, is currently under publisher review. It offers the first sustained theoretical account of sexuality through an existential lens, drawing on the philosophical lineage of Rollo May, Irvin Yalom, Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Barker and Kleinplatz to reframe sexual experience as a site of meaning, freedom, authenticity and encounter rather than symptom or dysfunction.
Her second book, Existential Desire, is in development. It is a theory of desire itself: what wanting does to the self, what being wanted does to the self, and how recognition functions as the existential currency of erotic life. The book moves through historical and literary figures to examine desire's capacity to reveal, distort and occasionally destroy the one who feels it.
A third book, Existential Sex: The Fear of Being Known, concerns erotic visibility, the dread of full exposure in intimacy and the structures by which people remain partially concealed even within their closest relationships.
Together the three books constitute a body of theoretical work building the intellectual foundations of existential sex therapy as a discipline.
My name is Dr. Genevieve Marcel, Existential Sex Therapist and Writer.
PhD in Clinical Sexology | MA Clinical Psychology | BS Microbiology | Board Certified Diplomate of Sexology
The Practice
Dr. Marcel maintains an atelier style clinical practice in Houston, Texas, conducted virtually. She works with individual adults whose concerns at the level of desire, intimacy and sexuality are connected to deeper questions of meaning, identity and authentic selfhood. The practice operates on an atelier model: a limited number of people seen with depth, continuity and full presence.
Formation
Dr. Marcel holds a PhD in Clinical Sexology, awarded with distinction, a master of arts in Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine University and a bachelor of science in Microbiology with Honors from the University of Arkansas. She is a Board Certified Diplomate in Clinical Sexology, a member of AASECT and the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality and a Licensed Professional Counselor Associate in Texas.
Her intellectual formation draws as much from existential philosophy and literature as from clinical training. The writers and thinkers who shaped her thinking most durably include Rollo May, Irvin Yalom, Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, Kierkegaard, Merleau-Ponty, Kleinplatz and Frankl.
Her work proceeds from a single conviction: that the inner life of sexuality is one of the most revealing and least examined dimensions of how a person is actually living. The books exist to build the theoretical language for that examination. The practice exists to conduct it.