Shame-based issues #3 – Porn addiction
First of all, let’s dispense with the argument about whether porn addiction actually exists. From a clinical perspective, porn addicts do not exhibit the same physiological symptoms as nicotine, alcohol and drug addicts.
Dr Brooke Magnanti writes in The Sex Myth that “sexual addiction and sexual compulsion represent pseudoscientific codifications of prevailing erotic values rather than bona fide clinical categories.”
So in that sense, no, porn addiction does not exist.
Porn addiction and shame
However, from a behavioural perspective, the emotional dynamics of porn addiction are strikingly similar not only to clinically recognised addictions but to other cyclical, shame-based issues such as self-harm. Academics may quibble over abstract definitions. The misery of porn users is very real. The inability to stop porn binges can destroy relationships and lead to the loss of jobs and families.
There is also the not insignificant question of whether excessive exposure to porn causes men to objectify women. The issue is a pressing one. 97% of British boys aged 16-20 have viewed porn and 23% consider themselves addicted. Because of society’s sexual shame, pornography is the only visual sex education tool that young men currently have access to.
Because of society’s sexual shame, pornography is the only visual sex education tool that young men currently have access to.
In my opinion, viewing pornography does not cause the objectification of women: it’s too late. It’s already happened. It happened 6,000 years ago, as I describe in The objectification of women happened at the dawn of patriarchy.
Because of society’s sexual shame, pornography is the only visual sex education tool that young men currently have access to. As a result, improvement is unlikely anytime soon and porn addiction can only rise.
The sexual-spiritual split
Writing in The Journey toward Complete Recovery, Michael Picucci, PhD, describes how society’s traditional antipathy to sex causes what he terms the ‘sexual-spiritual split’. This is a “deep psychic schism within almost everyone in our culture which prohibits enduring, loving relationships to form, which at the same time can remain sexually alive and growing.”
In short, the sexual-spiritual split is a psychic wound resulting from the incompatibility of our animal sexuality and our so-called civilised humanity. (This is the same fundamental psychological fissure that Freud wrote about in Civilization and its Discontents.) Picucci gives the origin of this split as “early religious and cultural training, which teaches that God, love, and family are good while sex is dirty, bad and perverse”. As described in A brief history of shame, this is because sex is traditionally regarded as transgressive.
Madonna or whore
By the time boys develop an interest in porn they have already internalised society’s unconscious sex-negative bias. When the natural adolescent desire for sexual exploration emerges, boys are unknowingly funnelled into seeing women in Madonna-or-whore terms. Either as loving, lovable and implicitly non-sexual women like their mothers and sisters, or as depersonalised sex machines whose sole purpose is dispensing pleasure. (See Sex in patriarchy – how the past shapes sex today)
Our prevailing psychological paradigm does not teach boys to view women in complete terms. Commanding respect, capable of giving and receiving love, yet also actively sexual.
Healing porn addiction
Understanding that porn addiction is based on shame opens up a simple premise. Ending the shame ends the addiction.
Porn addiction has an entirely functional basis. No one watches porn randomly. The specific images that attract us at any given time are not random either. When this is properly understood it provides a wealth of information that can be used to treat the condition.
“Michael helped me to see that I was not a victim of porn, rather that porn was a very diverse communication tool to help me to see myself, acting like a mirror.”
— CD, Canterbury, UK
ONLINE COURSE
