Yes There is Such a Thing as Sex Addiction: A Guest Blog by Jess Levith
Denying Our Reality
A Response To The Recent Sex Addiction Study: “Sexual Desire Not Hypersexuality, Is Related To Neurophysiological Responses Elicited By Sexual Images”.
To Mr. Steele et al.,
My name is Jessica Levith and I’m an Intern Marriage and Family Therapist currently working with Sex and Love Addicted clients. I’ve also been humbly recovering for almost nine years from an addiction you’ve recently claimed doesn’t exist. I speak for only myself when I voice that your methodology and conclusion for this study was insufficient, deeply hurtful, and clinically dangerous.
Taking this extremely complex issue of sex addiction (which involves multiple levels of trauma, unhealthy attachment, sexuality, physiology, and self-concept), you extracted for testing only its most provocative, media-grabbing symptom of pornography. You had your subjects examine sexually provocative still photos and then tested their brain activity for addictive responses paralleling those of substance addicts. When no parallel showed up, you concluded that sex addiction must simply be a high level of sexual desire. I’m respectfully proposing, that your study may have excluded many other, potentially unaccounted for psychologically addictive factors contributing to your subjects’ sex addiction, including previous trauma(s), social conditioning, and internalized shame.
I’m wondering if you consulted with sex addicts before beginning this study, asking them what their most powerful triggers are. I’m wondering if testing those same 52 subjects from your study (86% of whom were heterosexual white males) for addictive responses to more person-specific events might have yielded a higher correlation. In my experience, what triggers one sex addict does not necessarily trigger another, even if they both happen to binge on pornography. Perhaps my idea might not provide great results either, but it would sure feel like a more comprehensive stab at this complicated issue. To deduce that all sex addiction is merely a high level of sexual desire, based on a single-faceted physiological study, without any reference to the psychologically-addicted mind, is denying the truth of myself and millions of people who’ve had to scrape our lives off the ground from this dis-ease. Additionally, it dangerously plays into the caricaturing of the sex addicts as insatiable studs or hungry perverts.
What I most fear is that your narrow criteria for what negates the existence of sex addiction will perpetuate the already dangerous myth that sex addiction is something a person can control if they just try hard enough. It tacks on an extra layer of shame for those already struggling to slow down their compulsive behavior. I realize it’s not your responsibility that blogs and other media have been headlining the more provocative snippets of your study, however, it’s important to clarify to the general public there are other potential ways to be addicted to sex (and love) besides physiologically.
Respectfully,
Jessica Levith
Jessica Levith provides psychotherapy for adults and young adults in the SF Bay Area.
www.east-baytherapy.com or www.eastbaysexandloveaddiction.comPhone: 510.883.3074 email: jesslevithma@gmail.com Tumbler: http://sexandloveaddiction.tumblr.com/ Twitter: jesslevithmfti
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