You're Addicted to What? Challenging the Myth of Sex Addition

You're Addicted to What? | The Humanist:

The addiction model starts with “we admitted we were powerless.” The therapy model starts with “you’re responsible for your choices; I wonder why you keep doing what gives you what you say you don’t want?”

What this means for humanists [psychotherapists]

• The sex addiction movement exploits people’s fear of their own sexuality. As humanists we oppose anything that exploits fear.
• Recalling that sex addiction is a fairly new concept, we can observe the historical and cultural context from which the movement emerged—not a sexological context as much as a narrative about fear, danger, powerlessness, and victimization.
• The sex addiction model inevitably tells us that eroticism needs to be controlled, and that erotica and commercial sex are dangerous and problematic. This means that the sex addiction movement, with the help of the religious right, supports public policy focused on controlling sexuality. Unfortunately it has been very successful in that regard.
• The sex addiction model tells us that imagination has no healthy role to play in sexuality. This fundamental misunderstanding of human nature is very much our business.

The issue of what to call sexual behavior that is described as out of control is important not just for society in general, but for humanists in particular. To the extent that the sex addiction movement trivializes science as just one of many different perspectives, it affects us. To the extent that it tries to squeeze people into a small normative box of sexual behavior, it’s relevant to our cause. And to the extent that it pathologizes behavior that doesn’t hurt other people, it’s a prime example of what a humanist public policy would replace.

Dr. Marty Klein is a licensed marriage and family therapist and certified sex therapist in Palo Alto, California. He is on the editorial advisory board of the Humanist, and he recently spoke at the AHA annual conference.