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“If a woman wants to get in touch with their body and get out of their comfort zone, they should go to a licensed therapist who has experience in sex therapy, where what she says will be understood and protected,” Wyatt says.

Berman, who runs her own sex therapy institute in Chicago, agreed that Westheimer generally skimmed the surface when she addressed the hows and whys of sex.

The three became friends, and Harris took inspiration from the friendship of the other two as he developed the characters of Gary and Dustin, one of three interracial couples undergoing dubious sex therapy in “Slave Play.”

Barely a decade after landing in America, Mr. Etzioni was famous, writing books and articles far afield from the turgid corners of sociology — provocative commentaries on the nuclear arms race, European security, the Vietnam War, America’s racial and educational problems, energy and inflation policies and popular worries over pornography, student unrest and topics ranging from sex therapy to Hollywood hoopla.

“She is one of the few people to combine training in couples therapy, which is about intimacy and sharing and openness, with sex therapy, which says that creative tension is required for eroticism,” said the couples therapist Terry Real.