Well, I'm sick of the Tiger Woods story too, but I'm not sick of talking about sexual addiction. Hmmmm. Or, sexual compulsion. Or sexual hyperactivity disorder. Or sexual obsession.
I know that I'm supposed to be cautious about the label I'm using, being a responsible psychologist, and sexologist, and a Ph.D., and a clear-thinking, rational being, but I swear, there is a terrible problem going on out here. Can we all just look at what's going on with sex and society these days?
I have patients spending six hours a day masturbating to internet porn and unable to be sexual with normal looking flesh and blood partners who they claim to love. The women (with whom they have beloved children) just don't have the sexy bodies to which the guys have become accustomed through the internet. The men themselves are just getting into the porn deeper and deeper, needing weirder and weirder stimuli to get the necessary stimulation to orgasm. They’re looking at pictures of things that are so kinky or violent or disgusting to them that it would have been out of these guys' comfort zone four months ago. They are getting distant from their wives, distant from their friends, distant from their kids. They feel ashamed and scared. And they want to stop, but they can't.
I have patients spending working hours risking their jobs while on porn sites and Craig’s list on their company computers, unable to think about much else other than the ritual of how they are going to land their next sexual fix, unable to stop. When I tell my daughter, who is in H.R. in a major corporation, that maybe they should have some educational programs about sexual addition, she says,
"Mom, what are you talking about? The company is not going to work with this guy. He looks at porn on his company computer? He's toast. He'll get fired. That's the end of it." My patient sees that he's in deep doo-doo, but he can't stop. He's getting to the point where he's going into the company bathroom, and he's masturbating there. And he can't stop.
How about the unbelievable scene going on with "escorts" today? What's your choice? Blonde? Brunette? Tall? Short? Latin? Big breasts? Big buttocks? In every major city, there are high priced call girls available 27/4 . You can find them on a website on your iphone, each one with their own site, and then aggregated sites with listings arranged according to your preferred body type, hair color, ethnicity, etc. with a map telling you how close you are to each one. Oh, and with reviews of their "performances" on the erotic review site. And with your iphone, they're just a call away.
I've been seeing lots of patients who got turned on to these sites by a friend, and now they're having a hell of a time stopping that. They're getting deeply in debt from seeing escorts a few times a week. They're scared. But they can't stop. And believe it or not, these men are not evil or horrible men.
I actually wish Tiger had a problem with drugs. Then maybe some other more sympathetic face could get linked to the topic of sexual compulsivity, and the problem would, as Rodney Dangerfield might say, get some respect .Instead, it’s being greeted with sneers and jeers.
For me, Tiger makes a very poor poster boy for sexual addiction. He's so wealthy and powerful and young and handsome that most people are furious at what they read as simply his privileged attitude and "bad behavior." Some of them have shaudenfreude.
Look, I don't know Tiger Woods. I don't treat him. I don't know whether he has deep issues with intimacy that would make me very sympathetic to him or not. But I know my patients. And THEY have issues that make me want to help them.
Some mental health professionals out there are contributing to the public's skepticism about the legitimacy of a problem with sexual compulsion too. Some of my colleagues deny that there is a growing problem with sexual obsession. This belief I simply cannot comprehend. They must see a very different group of clients than I do.
Other colleagues object to the word "addiction" being used, because an addiction is supposed to be becoming dependent on a substance which one must ingest. I personally find the evidence that the brain can make it's own powerful chemicals in response to sexual stimuli compelling enough that I am ok with using the word addiction, because people with the problem identify with it.
Some of my colleagues worry that the label is "pathologizing the ordinary"-- cooking up a category of mental disorder to redefine socially unacceptable behavior as a disease. We don’t classify diseases in a vacuum. Social norms change over time. Homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder by American Psychiatric Associate in their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual up to 1973. These professionals worry about highly sexed people being stigmatized with a nasty label. They are gravely concerned that talking about such a problem is just going to make the United States more puritanical and sex negative. I totally understand their concerns and I endorse them.
I'm a sex therapist. I think sex is wonderful, most of the time. But sometimes it isn't wonderful. I just don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We can have a sex positive society AND provide treatment for the growing number of people who have become unhealthfully obsessed with sex . Clearly, the intense, varied, immediate kind of sexual stimulation available to people these days --because of technology and the internet-- is different from what used to be available to humans. It affects some people's brains and selves very powerfully. We do not understand what has been unleashed yet. But we don't have to totally understand this change to acknowledge it, and the dangers it holds.
Everyone who is a mental health professional is getting interviewed about Tiger. Some just turn their noses up at the whole idea of sexual addictions as a serious problem, period. According to one professor of psychology, "sexual addiction is one of those pop psychology diagnoses that has scant scientific support."
"The problem," he explains," is that the label "sex addiction" involves circular reasoning….It's not at all clear whether the term explains, rather than merely describes, people's sexual behaviors…At this point, it seems to be the latter: when we hear that someone has a 'diagnosis' of sex addiction, we haven't really learned anything new. We've merely applied a label summarizing what we already knew—basically that the person has serious trouble containing his or her sexual impulses."
Well, isn't it worth noticing and noting that the person has SERIOUS TROUBLE CONTAINING HIS OR HER SEXUAL IMPULSES? Is it worth noticing that this person needs help? Should they wait to get help until we come up with the politically correct and rationally perfect diagnosis or diagnoses? I agree that "sex addiction" is far from a scientific moniker. It's a description of out of control behavior.
The point is, some people are in major trouble with their sexuality. They aren't bad people. They are vulnerable. They need help. There are therapeutic treatments and tactics which work. Whatever you call the problem---sexual addiction, compulsion, obsession, please don't make fun of it. It's serious. Let those of us who are dedicated to understanding and solving the mystery help.
Copyright, 2010, Aline P. Zoldbrod Ph.D., reprinted with permission
