Joseph Kramer (sexologist)

Kramer was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the oldest of six children.[2] He attended Catholic schools from first grade to university. After finishing high school at the age of 17, he entered the Jesuit seminary where he spent ten years studying, teaching and preparing to become a priest.[3] In 1976, before being ordained, Kramer left the Jesuits and moved to New York City, where he lived as an openly gay man. He was hired as head of the religion department at Convent of the Sacred Heart, an all-girls Catholic school and continued to practice his religion by joining DignityUSA - a group for gay Catholics. He was eventually fired from his teaching position at the Convent of the Sacred Heart for being gay.[1]

At this time, Kramer moved to Berkeley, California to finish his Master of Divinity (M.Div.) degree and began studying massage, acupressure and rebirthing, as well as Taoism and Tantra. The professional bodywork methods he used were influenced by Stanislav Grof and Mantak Chia.[4] He came into contact with the ideas of psychologist Jack Morin while reading the novel Dancer from the Dance (1978) by Andrew Holleran.[5] He was later advised by Morin during his doctorate.[6]

In 1984 he founded the Body Electric School of Massage and Rebirthing, training state-certified massage therapists in Oakland, California. In 1992 he founded the EroSpirit Research Institute, and in 1999 created the New School of Erotic Touch. He was an associate professor of sexology at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco. Kramer is the founder of the profession of Sexological Bodywork [7] and was instrumental in the founding of six Sexological Bodywork schools: the Institute of Somatic Sexology in Australia, the Sea School of Embodiment in the UK, the Instituto Latino Americano de Sexologia Somática in Brazil, the International Institute for Sexological Bodywork in Switzerland, the Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education in Canada, and the Institut für Somatisches Lernen, Sexualität und Körperarbeit in Germany. He is on the faculty of the International Institute for Sexological Bodywork in Switzerland, the Institute of Somatic Sexology in Australia, the Sea School of Embodiment in the UK and the Instituto Latino Americano de Sexologia Somática in Brazil.

The forms of massage initially used in his work with Erospirit Research Institute were based on Tantric-Daoist principles of erotic bodywork that later became the focus of somatic sexology. In 1992 Kramer created Fire on the Mountain for men and later, in collaboration with Annie Sprinkle, Fire in the Valley for women.[8]

• A Social History of the First Ten Years of Taoist Erotic Massage, 1982–1992. PhD thesis, Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. San Francisco, 2002
• Introduction to Mindful Masturbation

• 2002 The Best of Vulva Massage
• 1998 Uranus: Self Anal Massage for Men
• 1995 Female Genital Massage (Fire in the Valley)
• 1992 Male Genital Massage (Fire on the Mountain)

• Trusted Bodywork
• Sexological Bodywork