Sex Addiction by Barry Reay & Nina Attwood & Claire Gooder

Sex Addiction by Barry Reay & Nina Attwood & Claire Gooder

Author:Barry Reay & Nina Attwood & Claire Gooder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2015-07-06T16:00:00+00:00


Clinton's sexual activity served as ‘a paradigm of sexually addictive behavior’.42 Levin contended that Clinton's (publicly reported) sexual history fulfilled his seven criteria of indicative sex addiction: (1) compulsion, (2) drive, (3) lack of control, (4) persistence, (5) damage, (6) societal disapproval and (7) acceleration.43 The syndrome of sex addiction becomes the Clinton syndrome.

Levin's study was based not on clinical consultation of the subject of his diagnosis – though he did draw on a practice file of anonymous troubled patients that comprised a large part of the book – but rather on biographies and newspaper and magazine reports (we loop back to the previous chapter on cultural representation). Nor did it strictly conform to his seven-point diagnosis. Clinton's addiction was presented as a strange combination of genetics and environment, what Levin termed ‘bio-psycho-social determinants’, with his alcohol- and gambling-dependent parents passing on their ‘neurochemistry’ to their sons (resulting in sex addiction for Bill and drug addiction for his brother), and his relentless pursuit of women a quest to ‘reconnect with his mother’.44 Then his actions merely confirmed Levin's diagnosis. How else could one explain the reckless sexual antics? ‘No man in his right mind would risk the presidency and everything he had worked so hard for to engage in a meaningless sexual encounter – unless he was caught up in a sexual addiction.’45 It was not a high point in the history of US psychotherapeutic theory.

Rick Springfield's memoir, published in 2010, detailed a life full of sexual liaisons, starting early in his teens and continuing on during his marriage to the woman he never stopped referring to as his soul mate and the true love of his life (to whom he is still married). From the very beginning of what was a long (although not uninterrupted) career in pop/rock music Springfield had ‘as much groupie sex as my road-worn penis could handle’. ‘I have been as promiscuous as women have allowed me to be in my life. And I thank the worn-and-torn skin of my weary dick that they want it as much as I do.’46 Sex was part of his definition of success. At one point he said, ‘I am as driven sexually as I am career-driven’ and that ‘what it's really about’ is ‘being in a career I'm passionate about…and having sex with lots of strangers’.47 But at no point in this memoir of a life and career of ups and downs did Springfield call himself a sex addict or seek therapy for sex addiction. He occasionally used the language of addictionology in referring to his ‘habit’ of casual sex or pondering the fact ‘It's a hard drug to quit cold turkey, this sex thing’ – but his larger perspective and interpretative framework produced another narrative.48

Springfield's was not only a memoir about sex but, perhaps most importantly, it was a memoir about mental illness and depression. He referred repeatedly to the/my Darkness – his depression – and revealed that he attempted suicide as a teenager because of it. Sex became a way of alleviating his fear of failure and deep-seated self-esteem issues.



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