“How convenient for the philanderer to hide behind the medical excuse. ‘My addiction made me do it’ is the modern equivalent and substitute for ‘the devil made me do it.’ Personal responsibility is easily dissolved when behavioral choices become fake psychiatric illnesses.” – Allen J. Frances, M.D., Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Duke University; Chair of the DSM-IV Task Force
Fads in psychiatry and psychotherapy come and go. The concepts of neurosis, hysteria, and pathologized homosexuality (to name a few) have all disappeared from the psychiatric landscape only to be replaced by the more recent fads of bipolar disorder and ADHD. The latest of all psychiatric fads is sexual addiction.
Undoubtedly, people can have problems with excessive sexual behavior. Nymphomania and satyriasis have been labels for this type of problem for hundreds of years. But recently, a small group of self-interested sex therapists, and a larger group of their “patients”, have come to push to include sex addiction (or compulsive sexual behavior) as a formal psychiatric diagnosis. Luckily, the American Psychiatric Association has rejected these attempts, realizing the problems inherent with such a diagnosis.
Without diving too far down the hole of philosophy, suffice it to say that the concept of disease in medicine has always referred to something that a person has, not something that a person does. What is called sexual addiction is without question a pattern of human behavior, and behavior, by definition, is chosen and willed. This fact is what separates behavior from reflex.
In the case of sexual addiction, no one honestly believes that the person said to be afflicted is unable to control his behavior. To be sure, he may feel as though he is unable to control his behavior, but there is a world of difference between these two ideas. (On a related note, if it were true that the so-called sex addict cannot control his behavior, then there would be no point to “sex therapy” for the problem.)
A second, and related, problem with the pathologization of sexual desire is the fact that any determination about the “appropriate” level of sexual interest and behavior is subject to a whole host of cultural, social, and political value judgments. What is too much sex to me may be not enough for you, and so on. Cancer and pneumonia exist as biological fact regardless of where you find yourself on earth. What is called sex addiction, on the other hand, may change substantially depending on where and when one has lived.
Sexual addiction provides a convenient and medical-sounding label for a problem that has existed for thousands of years: the sexual temptations of man and woman. How it will come to be used, assuredly, is as an excuse for bad behavior. We don’t have to look far to see it being used that way already.
To those who assert that sexual addiction is a real clinical entity, I say, “Show me the lab tests.” Of course, there are no lab tests. So what’s the disorder?
For further reading, please see this article by Allen Frances, M.D., chairman of the DSM-IV Task Force, on the absurdity of the diagnosis of “sexual addiction”, among others.
References
Frances, A. J. (2012, March 28). Do we all have behavioral addictions? [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://ift.tt/2sgl4ar
from Psych Central Blogs https://ift.tt/2xnAOgL
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