Sexual addiction, sexual compulsivity, sexual impulsivity, or what? Toward a theoretical model

Journal of Sex Research, August, 2004 by John Bancroft, Zoran Vukadinovic

State of mind during sexual acting out. Thirteen men and one woman described a typical state of mind suggestive of some degree of dissociation. The following are illustrative descriptions, each from a different subject: "... just find myself doing it ... another voice in my head"; "... an overpowering drive ... nothing else is under consideration"; "... numb, completely zoning out, not present, not conscious of reality"; "trancelike ... there seems to be a chemical or hormonal difference in me"; "... eyes glazed, numbing ... unfeeling ... focusing on the pleasure"; "... trancelike state ... kills time and pain ... numb like a dream"; "I'm not aware of anything else ... I block everything out ... my preoccupation"; "When I'm sexually aroused, I click out"; "... suspension of reality--nothing else enters your mind"; "... like being taken over--a different person--trancelike, peaceful"; "... feel detached from what is happening"; "... like euphoria--like cocaine"; "I shut myself off to everything and I am oblivious of what I am doing"; "... like a drug to numb out."

Other addictive patterns. Ten subjects reported other addictive patterns either currently or in their past: 3 with drugs, 4 with alcohol, and 3 with both drugs and alcohol. One man described overeating, another addiction to computer games, and one of the women described shopping sprees. Fifteen subjects, 4 of them with their own addiction histories, reported addiction problems in other family members.

Questionnaire Data in Male Subjects

Comparison of our measures for the male sex addicts and for the controls is shown in Table 1. The sex addicts reported significantly higher MS-1 (sexual interest when depressed) and MS-3 (sexual interest when anxious) scores than did the controls (p < .001 in each case). They also had higher SES (sexual excitation) scores (p = .029), but did not differ from controls in either SIS1 (inhibition due to threat of performance failure) or SIS2 (inhibition due to threat of performance consequences). The subset who completed the ZDPR (our trait measure for depression) scored significantly higher on this measure than did the controls (p = .02).

We divided the male sex addicts into subgroups on the basis of several potentially relevant behavioral markers and compared each pair with each other as well as with controls.

Mood regulators. Those who reported increased acting out when depressed were compared with the rest and with controls on MS-1 and MS-3 scores. We made a similar comparison with those reporting increased acting out when anxious. These sets of comparisons are shown in Tables 2 and 3.

There was substantial overlap between these two "mood regulating" groups; however, the "depression regulators" were significantly higher than the rest for MS-1 scores. The "anxiety regulators" did not differ from the rest for either measure.

Compulsive masturbators. Those whose principal out of control behavior was masturbation (n = 17), either using the Internet or other visual material, were compared with those whose acting out involved other types of behavior and other people (e.g., cruising, voyeurism; n = 9). These comparisons are shown in Table 4. It is noteworthy that both MS-1 and MS-3 scores were higher in the nonmasturbators, although neither difference was significant. The only significant difference was for SIS2, which was lower in the nonmasturbators than in masturbators (p = .03) and controls (p = .006).