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In a 2013 issue of Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity: The Journal of Treatment & Prevention, Reid argued that hypersexual activity should not be classified as an addiction despite having similarities with substance disorders.īut he maintains that the existence of sexual problems cannot be denied. Rory Reid, a practicing provider of treatment for sexual disorders and gambling and substance abuse problems at UCLA, critiqued Prause’s earlier work, saying he doubts whether brain markers of any kind can predict the absence or presence of a disorder. By studying subjects who viewed sexual images during an EEG, she showed that simply having a high libido, absent of a problem, creates a strong brain response. She made headlines last summer when she co-authored a study claiming that the response someone has to pornography has nothing to do with addiction.
Prause is no stranger to the sex addiction debate. Get the Facts: 12 Ways Sex Helps You Live Longer » The result is research that is subject to “many forms of bias” and not applicable to larger populations, he said. Ley, a clinical psychologist in Albuquerque, N.M., said the studies that justify the addiction are usually “cross-sectional.” This means they may describe how certain groups of people act, but they don’t show any real cause and effect. “They base their writings upon their own clinical experience and anecdotes.” “Many of these clinicians are themselves self-identified porn addicts, who are treating others who self-identify as addicts,” Ley said. Their work, published this month in the journal Current Sexual Health Reports, points to poorly conducted experiments, conclusions based on anecdotes, and limited samples.ĭavid Ley, the study’s lead author, told Healthline that the limited research that exists on visual sexual stimuli (pornography) is usually written by people working in what he calls a “lucrative” industry. So say the authors of an analysis of previous research on the subject. The dirty truth about pornography and sex addiction is that they probably aren’t real. The difference has implications for understanding both the phenomenology of sexual orientation-what it's like to be straight, gay or lesbian-and the process by which people learn about their orientation, says Bailey.Authors claim that the pornography industry and the sex rehab industry are behind flawed research. "The main message is that there is a very fundamental sex difference between sexual arousal patterns in men and women," says Bailey. Whether the films depicted two males, two females, or a male and a female engaging in sexual activity, the different groups of women in the study responded similarly. They found that women, unlike men, showed the same genital responses to different kinds of erotic stimuli regardless of their sexual orientation, says Bailey. In their study, Chivers and Bailey showed erotic films to heterosexual, bisexual and lesbian women while measuring their genital and subjective arousal. If so, it means there are fundamental sex differences in the relationship between arousal and orientation. Now, however, new evidence has emerged to suggest that "category specificity," as Bailey calls it-the tendency for gay men to become aroused only to same-sex images and heterosexual men to become aroused only to opposite-sex images-is not true of women.
The effect is so robust, he notes, that it can be used forensically to detect men's sexual orientation, and it probably plays a significant role in shaping men's self-identification as gay or heterosexual.īut similar research on women has not been conducted until very recently. That research, says Bailey, showed that heterosexual and gay men could be distinguished on the basis of their erectile response to pictures of nude men and women. The purpose of the study, says Bailey, was to explore a basic question about the relationship between sexual arousal and sexual orientation that has its roots in studies conducted in the 1960s. Conservative radio and television shows picked up the story, but because the study was under review, he couldn't explain why it wasn't the boondoggle it had been made out to be. "It always provokes mixed reactions," he says.īut when an article titled "Federally funded study measures porn arousal" appeared in The Washington Times last December and described in unflattering terms a study conducted with his graduate student Meredith Chivers, he was unusually frustrated, he says. Michael Bailey, PhD, says he is used to getting attention, both positive and negative, for his research on sexual orientation.