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Pornography addiction

Pornography addiction refers to excessive or obsessive (addiction) viewing of pornography.

The term is used primarily by those actively seeking to reduce or eliminate the use of pornography. Not everyone believes that pornography addiction exists, or that the harmful effects ascribed to it are real.

Some groups have created checklists or self-tests by which a person can examine themselves for "signs" of this alleged form of addiction. Common points include:

• looking forward to one's next on-line session with hopes of attaining sexual arousal
• more interest in masturbation than sexual relations with one's spouse

Dr. Victor Cline mentions a model of pornography addiction with 4 assumed progressive steps:

1. Addiction - A person compulsively views pornography.
2. Escalation - As time progresses, the addict requires more extreme, more deviant material to get the same effect and satisfy the compulsions.
3. Desensitization - The addict loses their perception of what is socially acceptable. Illegal material or those considered taboo, immoral, or repulsive seems "normal."
4. Acting out sexually - "...an increasing tendency to act out sexually the behaviors viewed in the pornography, including compulsive promiscuity, exhibitionism, group sex,voyeurism, frequenting massage parlors, having sex with minor children, rape, and inflicting pain on themselves or a partner during sex." [1] (http://www.setfreeporn.com/progression.htm)

Connections with violence

It has been claimed that that a small number of people who view pornography develop addictions which lead to violent and anti-social behavior. Pornography addictions have been linked to the enactments of serious crimes, notably in the cases of Ted Bundy and David Berkowitz.

Before his execution Ted Bundy claimed that his consumption of violent pornography helped "shape and mold" his violence into "behaviour too terrible to describe". He said that he felt that violence in the media, "particularly sexualised violence", sent boys "down the road to being Ted Bundys".

See also

• addictive behavior
• online pornography addiction
• sexual addiction
• philosophy of sex

External links

• Breaking Pornography Addiction (http://www.no-porn.com/)
• Treatment and Healing of Sexual and Pornographic Addictions (http://www.moralityinmedia.org/index.htm?pornsEffects/vbctreat.htm) - Dr. Victor B. Cline
• Can Intimacy be Found Online? (http://pureintimacy.org/gr/intimacy/understanding/a0000134.cfm) - from pornography recovery website PureIntimacy.org (http://pureintimacy.org/)
• Differential Diagnosis of Addictive Sexual Disorders (http://www.jenniferschneider.com/articles/diagnos.html) Using the DSM-IV by Richard Irons, M.D. and Jennifer Schneider, M.D., Ph.D.
• The Harmful Effects of Pornography by Paul J. McGeady (http://www.obscenitycrimes.org/harmfuleffects.cfm) describes Dr. Victor B. Cline's stages of porn addiction in more detail.
• Alvin Cooper et al.: Sexuality on the Internet: From Sexual Exploration to Pathological Expression (http://www.apa.org/journals/pro/pro302154.html)

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