epublishing store: Intro

Sexual Health eBook Volume4
Chapter 16

Compulsive or Other Problematic Sexual Behavior, Richard Leedes

Early relationships affect the nature of sexual desire and sexual behaviors through adulthood. In this chapter, I will explore how two factors—fantasies and emotional attachments—influence sexuality. In particular, I will explain how these factors contribute to hypersexuality, a condition sometimes referred to as sexual addiction or sexual compulsivity.

Fantasies can be described as compassionate, meaning that they involve an appreciation or cherishment of the personal qualities of one’s partner, or objectified, meaning that they focus on body parts or distinctive sexual activities. Fantasies can also be negative and anxiety producing, causing a person to avoid intimate contact or specific sexual behaviors. Through the course of this chapter, we will explore how the nature of fantasies is related to emotional attachments and how these two factors work together to form a person’s lovemap, a developmental template that reflects an idealized lover or an idealized erotic script (Money, 1986). It has been found that people with sexual addictions have a disposition, or bias, toward objectified fantasies, and at the same time, they are uncomfortable and anxious in close relationships.

Treatment of sexual addiction should take dispositions toward fantasies and emotional attachments into consideration. At the Counseling Center at Princeton, where we see 150 patients per week who struggle with sexual addiction, our goals are to help these people reduce the negative impact of their objectified fantasies and increase their comfort level in personal relationships.

Sexual Health eBook Volume4 Chapter 16 $20 http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/netcart.asp?MerchantID=104436&ProductID=3537210

Back to the list