Woet Gianotten, MD

Woet Gianotten walked through several careers. In his first career as a tropical doctor, he worked for 5½ years in West and East Africa. After that his future in the Netherlands divided along two roads. One road involved training as a gynecologist, and the other road involved reading Masters & Johnson at night. He got so fascinated by various aspects of sexuality that he decided to change to a future in sexology. After an additional training in psychotherapy he worked for 25 years in the Rutgers Foundation, a non-profit organization for sexual health. Here, the focus was on "common sexology", where the problems usually are not based on somatic disturbances. In addition to that, he had a job both in the Department of Medical Sexology in the University Hospital in Utrecht and in the Centre for Reproduction at the Erasmus University Hospital in Rotterdam. In the hospitals we talk "Medical sexology", where the major cause of sexual problems is found in somatic diseases, physical impairment or medical interventions. In the last years his sexological core business concentrated on three areas: Rehabilitation Sexology (dealing with physical rehabilitation), Oncosexology (dealing with cancer), and Reproduction Sexology (dealing with contraception & conception, fertility & infertility, pregnancy & the post-partum period). After many years looking at the sexual consequences of disease he gradually got intrigued by a change in the cause-and-effect direction. How can good sex promote good health: Or as we call it now: "The health benefits of sexual expression".

Woet Gianotten is co-founder of the "International Society for Sexuality and Cancer". Working in the Netherlands he mainly writes in Dutch. He was editor of the Dutch-Flemish textbook "Sexology" and chief editor of the "Handbook of Sexuality in Disease and Physical Impairment" which is expected in 2008.

In 2006, reaching the Dutch retirement age, he was obliged to step back from his university appointments. Presently he has patient contacts in a centre for physical rehabilitation, but the majority of his professional time is spent on teaching and writing. In the last years he is recombining his first and last career, returning once in a while to Tanzania for teaching "upcountry sexology".