Archive for October, 2010

For the treatment of sex addiction – a psychoanalytic approach

by Dorothy C. Hayden, LCSW

It is good for individuals of sex in the 12-step programs is known that all addictions, sex is the most difficult to master . Far away from the idea that sex-addiction of the “fun”, so the pain of dealing with this problem is enormous. The stress is so convincing that it is common for members of the production of same-sex groups not to get in a position to any continuous time of sexual sobriety, soaked despair and hopelessness. Before treatment, sexual staging the only source of drug safety, joy, calm and acceptance. It animates and connects. It relieves loneliness, emptiness and depression

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athlete’s foot sex was of the mind. It is an itch always waiting to be scratched. Scratch, but the causes of injuries and relieve itching ever. In addition, the proportion of people to go to therapy or a 12-step program quite small. The majority of compulsive sexual live in isolation filled with shame. Nearly 100% of people who come to me, to an initial consultation, whether for the compulsive use of prostitutes, phone sex, fetish, cross dressing, or masochistic encounters with dominatrixes, relay under the shame they feel in their told me stories, but also experience a feeling of freedom that comes from finally able to work with other people, which is hidden, shameful, sexually compulsive acts that imprison them.

This is a condition that is easily removed and the person is bleeding more expensive. The life of a sex addict gradually becomes very small. Freedom of self-fulfillment is altered. Energies are consumed. The Raptors need for a specific type of sexual experience drives the addict to countless hours in the world to spend from their addiction. Inevitably, the voltage at the beginning to higher costs and higher requirements. Whether on the Internet, to the sexual fantasies with great people, and on the phone sex hotlines or frantically searching the net and the S & M clubs for someone who would like a special ritual fetish fantasy, or cruising the bars on the rushed to find the “one” having sex in a public toilet or before this dungeon, beaten and humiliated, is sex addiction a devastating disease that takes a heavy toll.

friends escape. Hobbies and activities once enjoyed deleted. Financial Security decays as sums as high as 000 or 000 € per annum for sex is. Then there is the constant fear of exposure. Relations with partners are in ruins, is the appeal of sex with an intimate partner nothing compared to the intense “high” from engaging in the dark and twisted world of sexual coercion. What is a sex addict? Sex addiction has nothing to do with sex. Any sexual act or apparent “perversion” has no meaning apart from its psychological context unconscious. A simple definition of sexual addiction is no different than the definitions of other addictions. But a simple definition of this complex and intractable problem is not enough. What distinguishes the sex addiction from drug and other makes it so enduring is that the subject of sex to our inner unconscious wishes and fears, our sense of self, our identity. could

The current treatment of participation in a 12-step program includes, go to an outpatient clinic, in collaboration with the material of Patrick Carnes, aversion therapy or medication to prevent hyper-sexuality. Most cognitive behavioral therapy, which aims to help patients control or suppression of the instinct for a certain period, usually a desire to group norms of their 12-step meeting or must conform to please the therapist. Although I am the effectiveness of the 12-step programs to a support structure to identify, in my opinion, is the reason why relapse is so common that these treatments do not affect long-term changes in the personality structure that the stress removed at the root. The current treatment is not to transform the mental energies, so that the sector is dominated by the reality of the Spirit’s personality, so that the impulse to action can be understood and controlled.

During the definition of sex addiction is the same as other drugs (repeated violations of the behavior and continuation of behavior despite negative consequences more control and more), sexual assault is different from other addictions deep sex means that our unconscious wishes , fears and conflicts. Sex addiction is a symbolic text of deeply rooted unconscious dysfunctional relational patterns with self and others. This is a person, the development was derailed due to poor parents. Therefore, the continued growth and change most in the arena of contemporary psychoanalysis, which seeks understanding and repair of these unconscious dysfunctional relational patterns with the development of a unified and structured sense even occur. This new personality restructuring regulate itself better feeling states without the use of a destructive defense like sexualization and find meaning, joy, intimacy, meaningful purpose and benefits from sources on the Internet and suitable to life.

The rest of this document a brief overview of psychoanalytic historical perspectives on sexual deviance will be, and then articulate the current understanding of the dynamics analysis and treatment of sexual compulsions. Any discussion of psychoanalysis, history, must begin ipso facto, with Sigmund Freud. Freud made that sexual deviance is due to an incomplete resolution of the Oedipus complex, with its accompanying castration anxiety. unconscious castration anxiety occurs in the present consciousness of the people in the form of fear of confrontation, retaliation, or blame, feelings of inadequacy, and perhaps doubts about gender identity. Sex addiction, according to Freud, is a defense against a weak sense of masculinity with relentless fear of sex, women, intimacy, aggression and competition combined face. Analysts who followed Freud had different opinions. sexual compulsions stem from a desire for approval, prestige, power, building self-esteem, love and security, which are felt necessary for survival. The act addicts lack of sexual experience as a threat to their existence.

Characteristic of each drug has a long history of a disturbed mother-child relationship. A mother unempathic, narcissistic, depressed or alcoholic has a low tolerance for stress and frustration of the child. She is not able, empathy, attention, care and support the healthy development host. The result at the end of life, separation anxiety, fear of abandonment and a sense of imminent danger of self-fragmentation. This fear sends the sex addict running to his eroticized fantasy cocoon where he safety, reduced fear and oppression of an unconscious desire to create experiences and to keep the missing but necessary tie to the mother. Typical of such person is the hope he an idealized “other”, which can embody, can find update and implement the desired feed constantly parenting. This approach is doomed to failure. Inevitably begins to penetrate the needs of the other person to the imagination. The result of the frustration, loneliness and disappointment. On the other hand, a mother to be intrusive and attentive. You may unconsciously seductive, maybe available with the child as a substitute for a spouse emotional. The child takes the mother’s inability to appropriate boundaries as seductive and set a massive disappointment.

Later in life, the addict hyper-sexual and has difficulty setting limits. True intimacy is experienced as a burden that consumes. The disappointment of not experiencing appropriate parental boundaries will not be played later in life unconsciously by the addicts believe that rules do not apply to him in relation to sex, but it can be regulated in line with other parts of his life. An important issue for all addictions is that they experienced deprivation and chronic deep need in childhood. Addicts generally suffer emotional harm in the parent-child interaction and other relationships. Intensive interpersonal anxiety is the result of emotional deprivation must early in life. In later life, man experiences anxiety in all intimate relationships. Because the sex addict is not afraid to get in a position to what they really need and people because his desperate search for fulfillment of unmet needs of childhood inevitably lead to disappointment, it is inevitable to alleviate the dependence of sexual fantasies and acts, fear prior to connection and intimacy, and as a means to creating a self-assertion.

Sex

, for the addict begins to be its value, and a confirmation of his self-esteem. Feelings of inferiority, inadequacy and worthlessness magically disappear while engaged sexually, by deed or through countless hours on the Internet. However, to make the use of sex itself, the approval or validation center closes its use to the needs of privacy of another child’s needs. Characteristic of this kind of narcissism, the visualization of other people is not as whole people who have their own feelings, desires and needs, but as liberators set of much-needed satisfaction that shores of a fragile self-esteem. This is a cycle in which his narcissism prevents him to draw satisfaction from mutual, reciprocal relationships in real life. Sexualization, once again, returned as a magic elixir, where their needs by magic, without the very real vicissitudes of intimate relationships are to negotiate met. One of my clients, a 48-year-old bachelor is attractive, in the process of breaking a different relationship. After years in a household life-threatening childhood, he was calm in his own world of fantasies and masturbation as a way of helping to protect you.

“When I was a child I was obsessed with beautiful women’s magazines. If I had have to this day, I went through one woman after another. As an adult, I knew there was sadness and anger I did not want to face. To escape, I have a steady stream of women who had loved me, reassured me, paid attention to my needs. I went to peep shows and visited prostitutes. More than one night I spent hours in my car around the block on the Looking for just the Walker Street right to give me oral sex in my car. One night I had sex with a transvestite. I cried all the way home. “He met a girl who he described as” perfect -. my salvation, my Heil “

He was hired, but soon lost interest in sex, which he described as” boring “. While still employed, he began to pick up prostitutes for oral sex in the car and began to use sex compulsively phone. Your current relationship is broken because it has a woman for her beauty and youth (which reflects his narcissistic) elected.

“When I was very young I put a blanket over my genitals as a kind of reassurance that I was not always by my parents. The rest of my life was a struggle by other means, to find calm me. When I discovered prostitutes I thought I was in heaven. I can now have sex and in total control. I can have all, as I want when I want. I do not care about the girl, as long as I pay. I did not to me with vulnerability and rejection concern. It is my pleasure controlled world. This is the ultimate antithesis of withdrawal is from my childhood. “

The use of sexualization as a defense is a common theme that runs through the psychoanalytic literature. A defense mechanism to survive psychologically harmful to young children for a family environment. Although this kind of protection is good for a long period, continue to use it as an adult is destructive to the continued operation of the person’s sense of well-being. Losing is in sexual fantasies and constantly to others as potential sexual partners, or online erotic sex addict in a position to significantly reduce and control a wide range of threats and uncomfortable emotional states. Most addicts to prevent potentially overwhelming anxiety or the addiction process control. Less depression, anxiety and anger are the pay-offs that operate to facilitate and sustain life in the cocoon erotic. I quote another patient, showing a case of narcissistic personality in the use of sexualization as a defense. This is a 52-year-old pretty unique success story.

“I went on a date last night. She wanted sex. I did not. It is predictable. I do not think I can maintain even an erection. Despite countless hours spent obsessively navigation on the Web to erotic in my fantasies, if it really is when you find someone who seems to be the embodiment of sexual pre-occupation, interest, life as soon as his wishes and needs are disappearing in the picture. Sometimes I’m not with the pursuit of real women bother, because I know the inevitable result is disappointment. I’m just not ready to meet someone who does not need anything. Curiously, my life is still dominated by sex. It becomes a prism to see through that I do everything. I go to a family reunion and are lost in sexual fantasies about my teenage nieces. I live in constant fear of discovery as a “perverse.” I see a woman dressed in a train in a way that triggers me, and I’m spoiled for the day. Regular sex just do not do it for me. It must be bizarre or forbidden or “out of the box.” I’ll be at work in a haze of erotic women around me all the objects of sexual fantasy I’m distracted … not focus when something requires my attention, are, when intrusion of real life, and I tear my sexual concerns, I’m angry in real life is so boring .. Regular sex with a girlfriend holds no interest for me. “

This patient used sexualization as a means of defense. He uses his sexual pre-occupation as a way to ward off chronic feelings of loneliness, inadequacy and emptiness born in a small tent to withdraw food from one to get depressed mother. For stress and anxiety starts to overwhelm the control her emotions, it is plagued by cravings to indulge his fantasies and his lyrics. Sexualization is a standard way to manage emotions they as intolerable and as a means of stabilizing a fragile sense of self confidence. It is my belief that sex addiction requires a contemporary approach to psychotherapy. Psychoanalysis has dropped in the 1970s with the work of a prominent psychoanalyst of the Freudian approach and established a type of treatment that will be particularly useful change in the treatment of sex addiction. Contemporary analysts no longer conduct treatment three times per week on the couch. They did not dig up hidden meanings or silence, or set to a “cast” as “One Who Knows”.

The process is a collective responsibility and the relationship between patient and therapist is co-created and mutual. Some contemporary psychoanalysts with the concept of a vertical split in the treatment of addicts. Division are bad parents, resulting in structural deficits of personality. Patients often report that they are fraudulent, feel live two lives with two different sets of values and goals. They believed they were a version of the action “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekel and Mr. Hyde.” One area of the personality, in reality, that the responsible husband and father has taken root. That part of the person is anchored in awareness, adaptive, in reality, structured and often successful in business. It is also the sector with guilt and shame of their sexual impulses, and ultimately to seek treatment to improve his misery. The “Mr. Hyde” side of the vertical split has a completely different values and seems impervious to his own moral orders. “Mr. Hyde” the unconscious part of the split-off personality. He is the impulse, the erotic fantasy lives and prey is sexualized, unstructured and unregulated. This side of the vertical crack appears to be incapable of thinking for pulses, and is not about the consequences of his behavior. This is the part of the self, the hidden, dark, driven and enslaved.

For a full discussion of the actual process of therapy is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say, the therapist uses himself as an instrument for the integration of the division, which is reflected in the construction of the personality structure. closes the gap in the treatment of the division. His goal is to create a relationship with the therapist that emotional states is regulated as a “laboratory” is used to bring awareness inappropriate relationship models, offering empathy and understanding, and reconstructs the original childhood dependency. The goal is an integrated self that is able to just experience a sexual fantasy without worrying about it and is without damage to the Council on sexual scenario. The patient reaches a certain capacity for self-criticism regulate mood, look and maintain an adequate and supportive relationships both within and outside of treatment. He is then free to sexuality in its place and free energy as the actual relationship satisfaction creative or intellectual goals, the benefit-and recreational activities, and have a strong sense of appreciation of self, allowing it to end its isolation. He is then free to love, to a deep satisfaction, sex, assertiveness, and the potential work experience, a valued member of the human community to have.

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