"Sexual compulsivity has been debated by clinicians and the public for decades. The field has been grappling with defining what is "too much sex." What is it? An addiction? A compulsion? Something else? Often, the debates become emotive with much moral and/or religious biases and subjectivity, both amongst clinicians and also with the public and the clickbait headlines in the media."
"There are several obstacles that make sexual compulsivity particularly difficult to understand in-depth. Firstly, there is a vast diversity of people's baseline level of sexual desires and interests, and so many myths on what "healthy sex" should look like, which makes it challenging to discern between shame, moral incongruence, and real sexual compulsivity. Secondly, some mental health professionals have been over-diagnosing sexual compulsivity based on their own ideas of what they deem "too much sex", "unhealthy", or " sex addiction", contributing to the confusion."
"Thirdly, the field has been held back by poorly conducted research, much pseudo-science, religious biases, and a dominant clinical discourse of "sex/ porn addiction" even though the evidence for addiction is poor and has not been clinically endorsed. This dominant discourse of "sex/ porn addiction" infiltrated the public's narrative, making people afraid of sex, particularly sex that is not heteronormative, monogamous, and vanilla."
Clinicians and the public have long debated what constitutes 'too much sex,' oscillating between labels like addiction and compulsion. Diverse baseline sexual desires and pervasive myths about 'healthy sex' complicate clear diagnosis, and moral or religious biases can produce shame and mislabeling. Many mental health professionals have over-diagnosed sexual compulsivity based on personal or cultural norms. Weak research, pseudo-science, and a dominant 'sex/porn addiction' discourse have distorted public understanding and increased sexual fear, especially toward non-heteronormative or non-monogamous expressions. Contemporary approaches favor rigorous research, sexological ethics, and treating compulsivity as a symptom of underlying disturbances.
Read at Psychology Today
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