Born the outback mining town of Broken Hill, N.S.W., Australia, Dr. Pertot became a sex therapist by accident when she undertook her postgraduate training in Clinical Psychology at the University of NSW in 1972. Sex therapy was a very new discipline and it was included in the clinical training program.After completing the Masters, Dr. Pertot researched postpartum loss of sexual desire and enjoyment for her doctoral dissertation. Since then, Dr. Pertot has worked in a variety of clinical settings, including community health centres and more recently private practice. She has specialized in sex therapy but has always maintained a broad clinical practice. Her particular areas of clinical interest are problems of libido, particularly couples with mismatched libidos, and adults with a history of sexual assault. These two areas demonstrate both the simplicity and complexity of adult sexual problems. In her study of loss of libido in the postnatal period, she found that this was usually due to fatigue and not significant psychological or relationship issues. This led to a pragmatic approach to sexual problems, which she describes as finding "living in the real world" solutions. The complexity of human sexuality is revealed in the work with victims of sexual assault which indicates a great range in long term sexual consequences.
Dr. Pertot began writing in early 1980s, with a fortnightly column on mental health issues in the local paper, and she has since had many articles published in various popular magazines. Her pragmatic approach is demonstrated by the title of her books, A Commonsense Guide to Sex (1985, revised 1994 HarperCollins), and Perfectly Normal: Living and Loving with Low Libido (Rodale 2005). Her new book is When Your Sex Drives Don't Match: Discover Your Libido Types To Create A Mutually Satisfying Sex Life (Avalon, 2007).