Spilling their secrets

When Dr Brandy Engler went into business as a psychotherapist in Manhattan, she assumed that most of her clients would be women (her expertise was female sexual desire), and that building a clientele would be slow. Both assumptions were wrong.

“The calls started coming almost immediately,” says Engler. “And almost all of them were from men. They won’t seek the treatment they need for depression — or ask directions if they’re lost. But if there’s a problem with their penis, they reach out.”

Six years and 500 clients later, Engler, 37, is an authority on the alpha-male libido. Wealthy young banker, broker, and hedge-fund manager clients at her Times Square clinic led her to be branded “Wall Street’s sex therapist”. Psychotherapy is unfashionable (thousands of analysts are out of business), so she’s unusual in being granted access to “the inner sexual and psychological worlds of the rich and powerful”. Now, she’s telling what she’s learned.