‘As a child, I had a book with a macabre 15th century painting: writhing naked bodies, blood, people being torn up. I was fascinated, and ashamed that I liked it. I used to go to the basement to watch an old show with nude actors doing very erotic things, and would go into ecstatic states as a child. I drew pictures of people being strung up, their breasts tied up, being boiled in oil. I thought I was possessed by the devil, that men in white coats would come get me.

‘I went to grad school and worked at the public defender's office, interviewing sex offenders in prison to say whether they could be released. I was finding humanity in them, seeing that they’d been horribly traumatized themselves. The school didn’t like this. I was called into the dean's office and threatened to be flunked.

‘In my thirties I was in a mental hospital, in a semi-locked unit. One day I said something about wanting to hurt myself. They dragged me to the locked unit. There, I saw what deep mental illness really looks like. A woman was talking to me, and she put out her cigarette in her arm. After all my years thinking I was so crazy, I realized, that's not me.

‘I work a lot with Indian couples, and I’ve learned how little sex education they get. An Indian sex therapist friend told me that her female clients from Gujarat only want to do therapy in English, because there is not one word about sex in their language that is not vulgar or disgusting.’

Dr. Anna Randall earned a Master of Social Work from Boston University, and a Master of Public Health and Doctor of Human Sexuality from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. She is currently a sex therapist in Silicon Valley, and co-founder and Executive Director of The Alternative Sexualities Health Research Alliance.

Anna begins by sharing her childhood erotic fascinations, and the pervasive role of shame in her Catholic upbringing. We trace her unique history of navigating 27 different therapists, beginning with a psychoanalyst who fell asleep during sessions, and how those encounters have informed her current approach as a directive sex therapist. Finally, we discuss her clinical work treating desire discrepancies in multicultural couples, and how watching Indian Matchmaking has helped her decode their intricate dynamics.