COMPULSION
06.26.155:15
AM ET
Your Porn Addiction Isn’t Real
The last time
neuroscientists Nicole Prause (Liberos LLC at
UCLA) and Vaughn
Steele (Mind
Research Network) published on porn addiction, they received six legal threats,
several calls for a retraction, and anonymous emails telling them to kill
themselves.
Their controversial
claim: “porn addiction” isn’t actually an addiction, at least in the sense that
it does not neurologically behave like other well-documented
addictions.
For therapists that treat
porn on an addiction model and for religious groups like Focus on the
Family that are invested in
maintaining a concept of “porn addiction,” the research undermines the clinical
language they used in their approach to the controversial medium. But conclusive
evidence for “sex addiction” and “porn addiction” continues to prove
elusive.
Today, Prause, Steele,
and their team of researchers are back with a new study, published in the
journal Biological Psychology, that only reaffirms
their previous findings: “porn addiction” and “sex addiction,” as we understand
them, may not be real.
The results were clear: Subjects who reported experiencing problems as a result of their pornography use did not display characteristically addictive brain activity when viewing sexual images.
In what is now the
largest neuroscience investigation of porn addiction ever conducted, Prause and
a team of UCLA-based researchers asked 122 men and women to answer questions
about their use of “visual sexual stimuli” to determine if they experienced
problems as a result of their porn usage.
Whether the subjects were
“problem users” or not, they were all shown several categories of
images—pleasant ones like skydiving photos, neutral ones like portraits,
unpleasant ones like mutilated bodies, and, of course, sexual images—while
hooked up to an electroencephalogram (EEG), a device that measures electrical
activity in the brain.
From this body of data,
researchers examined each subject’s late positive potential (LPP), a common
measure for the intensity of the brain’s emotional response at a given moment.
The results were clear: Subjects who reported experiencing problems as a result
of their pornography use did not display characteristically addictive brain
activity when viewing sexual images.
As Greg Hajcak, a Stony
Brook University researcher on the study, points out, a cocaine addict will
experience “increased LLP to cocaine-related pictures”—one of the clearest
indicators of psychological addiction.
But even subjects in the
study who experienced “major problems” related to their porn usage didn’t
display this same LLP pattern when viewing sexual images. In fact, as the
researchers note, they “showed decreased brain reactions when shown the sexual
images, rather than heightened activity”—the opposite of what one would expect
to find in an addict’s brain.
Some self-described “porn
addicts” may experience legitimate problems as a result of their habits, the
researchers are quick to clarify, but neurologically speaking, they do not
appear to have the same relationship to porn as a substance addict has to their
drug of choice. In other words, porn and sex addictions are probably not
addictions and treating them as such could prove
counter-productive.
“This study appears to
add to a list of studies that have not been able to identify pathology
consistent with substance addiction models,” the authors
conclude.
“Labeling a person’s attempt to control urges a ‘sexual addiction’ may interfere with therapy...”
So far, the American
Psychiatric Association (APA) has agreed that there is insufficient evidence to
support diagnoses for sex and porn addiction. In 2010, the APA rejected the inclusion
of “sex addiction” in the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). A new condition called “hypersexual
disorder” was proposed for the DSM-5 but, in 2012, the APA rejected
it as well for
lack of evidence.
A large study like Prause’s only shores up these previous decisions. But for those who seek the medical authority of an official “sex addiction” diagnosis, this may not be the best news. If possible, Prause and her team would like to avoid the controversy and threats this time around, although that may be impossible given the loaded subject matter.
A large study like Prause’s only shores up these previous decisions. But for those who seek the medical authority of an official “sex addiction” diagnosis, this may not be the best news. If possible, Prause and her team would like to avoid the controversy and threats this time around, although that may be impossible given the loaded subject matter.
“Many people have
misinterpreted our research as saying that people are faking these problems,”
she tells The Daily Beast. “We have never made that claim.”
Prause stresses that
therapists should simply be providing treatments that are “supported by
research” and that “addiction appears to be the wrong model” for those
treatments.
As it stands, several
therapy programs, rehab centers, and religious groups continue to treat problems
related to sex and pornography using an addiction-based approach. The
Catholic-led organization Integrity Restored, for example, considers
porn to be addictive, claiming that “[b]rain scans show how the brain of a porn
addict is no different than the brain of a drug addict.”
To the contrary, the
research of Prause and her team seems to prove that the brain of a porn addict
behaves quite differently from the brain of a drug addict.
The Church of
Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints also runs a notable Addiction Recovery Program that treats
“pornography addiction” using a 12-step program. Many other churches and rehab
centers—like the famous Promises Treatment Centers frequented by Hollywood celebrities—take a
similar approach to porn and sex “addiction” or
“compulsivity.”
“Although the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders does not yet recognize sexual
compulsivity as a disorder, it is a very real and serious problem,” the Promises
website maintains.
But unscientifically
mislabeling these problems as “addictions,” Prause and team argue, helps no one,
especially those who actually do want to change their relationship to
porn.
“Labeling a person’s
attempt to control urges a ‘sexual addiction’ may interfere with therapy
approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) that can reduce
distressing sexual behaviors,” said co-author and Idaho State University
psychologist Cameron Stanley.
In contrast to an
addiction recovery approach—which seeks to end problematic behavior—Prause tells
The Daily Beast that an ACT approach might involve “reducing viewing over time,
not necessarily eliminating it.”
“ACT also supports
finding ways to be comfortable with negative feelings associated with viewing
sex films, which ultimately might make a person enjoy lower consumption rates,”
she says.
There has already been
preliminary research from Utah State University (PDF) suggesting that ACT
could be an effective way to help those who claim to have an “Internet
pornography addiction.” In the experiment, researchers treated six men with
eight 90-minute sessions of ACT. Three months later, the men had experienced an
85 percent reduction in viewing along with increased quality of
life.
Sex and porn “addictions”
may not be real but, whatever they are, it’s likely can still be treated. The
catch? We might have to stop calling them “addictions” first.
# # #
No comments:
Post a Comment