Does porn addiction need treating?
Porn addiction before the internet.
Louis XIV, the grandest narcissist of his age, forbade his children to be born in the special birthing chairs that were popular at the time. His women gave birth lying down. The Sun King wanted to see what was happening. I have read a study by colleagues of Louis XIV’s personality; they classed his psychological type as perverse narcissism. Such personalities are prone to sexual perversions.
While watching a birth, he not only made sure the child was born alive — which let him take possession of it psychologically — but also took pleasure in the process itself.
Such acts can be compared to watching porn at a time when there was no video yet, but an inner passion for spying on intimate processes and for exhibiting oneself lay deep in the personality.
If we look further back in history, sixteen hundred years before the Sun King, to the Roman Empire, images from Tinto Brass’s erotic drama “Caligula” flash vividly before our eyes.
“Caligula”, 1979, directed by Tinto Brass
The Roman emperor of that time held orgies, often ending in perversions and murders, on ships decorated with gold and precious stones. Caligula is hard to place on the narcissistic spectrum; he was more likely a sociopath. Many historians believe he not only killed his grandfather Tiberius, the second Roman emperor, but also often publicly cut off the genitals of participants in his orgies. Caligula revelled in absolute power and impunity.
A great deal of time has passed since the Roman Empire. And all these years society has kept a lid on sexual abandon. The church, religion, laws and social order are meant to dampen the natural and psychological passion for sexual perversion, including watching others have sex. But the fantasies haven’t gone anywhere, and today most of them can be acted out through pornography.
How does watching porn affect relationships?
According to Pornhub’s reports, preferences can differ radically from country to country. Statistics for 2021 showed that Russians spend half a minute less on the site than the world average — a little over eight minutes is enough for them. Surprisingly, the second most popular category among Russians was erotic hentai cartoons. More and more often we try to get pleasure from something unreal and made up.
The old saying “there was no sex in the USSR” comes to mind. Today sex is under attack from the church and the champions of “traditional values”, as if it should lose its pleasure and serve only the technical function of having children.
So how does watching porn affect relationships? It drives partners apart when they find it hard to admit their fantasies and desires to each other. Role-play is either not practised at all or full of banalities and clichés.
Modern medicine and psychiatry have a whole field devoted to treating porn addiction. It may involve medication that acts on the limbic system responsible for producing dopamine, as well as classic psychotherapy. But perhaps the phrase “treating porn addiction” should be replaced by “restoring a harmonious relationship and sex life”? There is even a specific term, scopophilia — the urge to make love while watching someone else’s sexual act or porn.
What is wrong with modern porn? It has almost no emotion. But perhaps that is exactly what makes it appealing. The partners do without long foreplay, don’t fall in love and don’t suffer. They get physical pleasure while completely isolating the psyche. In real life you have to adapt to your partner. As Freud noted, watching other people’s sexuality is about sexual activity as such and almost entirely excludes human relationships. That is why sex in a partnership gradually fades. Dissociation sets in — sex comes apart from emotions, which are eaten up by everyday life.
The reasons are psychological — loss of interest and the stress of communication — and biological (the hormonal surges responsible for arousal in men and women happen at different times).
Pornography gives no emotions.
Watching pornography can be compared to an erotic dream. In both cases the Superego is absent. There is no shame; everything is allowed and easy. Anything is possible. Infantile, childlike group porn, when it is hard to deny yourself having everything and to choose one thing. Aggression and masochism as a way of taking possession of a partner or of your own body. Fetishism as a transitional object onto parental figures, tied up with Oedipal meanings. That is why fetishism can replace both heterosexual and same-sex sex.
“Young men sometimes have problems with anejaculation because of overuse of pornography. A real sexual act cannot provide the same level of absorption and arousal, so orgasm doesn’t happen.”
Porn mechanises sex and separates it from real life. At the same time it protects a person from meeting the “other”. The “other” always stirs up fear of the unknown and awakens the memory of prohibitions, which in turn undermine self-confidence. Another important reason is the fear of opening up and becoming vulnerable. In relationships and in sex, for real pleasure, you have to lay yourself bare. But the modern world fights against this, confusing personal boundaries with the possibility of enjoying the dissolving of some boundaries with a partner during sex.
Watching porn doesn’t make us ill. On the other hand, it becomes a problem if pornographic images or videos occupy a person too strongly and too often — if they attract them more than the real body of the person they are (or could be) in a relationship with.
Pornography strips sex of emotion.
For example, one of my clients, a 26-year-old man, is still a virgin. He was brought up by his mother and grandmother. He tried to build relationships at university but always got lost when it came to anything beyond talking. Now he says that sex with a real person is the most frightening thing that could happen to him. He plays computer games and watches porn based on them. His inner conflict goes back to the Oedipal period. There was no man around with whom he could compete for his mother’s love. It is as if he was erased from real life and moved into a virtual one, where you can be a hero and win without meeting another person’s eyes or competing with them.
Guilt after watching pornography.
At the same time, I don’t want to demonise pornography. As the well-known French sexologist Alain Héril says: “Pornography can help create fantasies. In my practice there have been many men who felt guilty for watching pornography. And you should know that women watch it too. And of course, pornography doesn’t necessarily speak of sexual illness, perversion or addiction. It is important to help make this aspect less dramatic.”
In conclusion, I would note that our lives have too little sex and too many prohibitions — especially in Russia today. Pornography may be the only way to avoid a paranoid fear of being pursued by your partner. Pleasure is forbidden, so it has to be hidden from others’ eyes.
When working with clients, it is very important to pay attention to their sex life and to analyse, among other things, their preferences in pornography. This can be compared to working with a client’s dreams: in both cases prohibitions and taboos disappear. A person’s preferences change over time. To take my client as an example, he may move from watching anime to videos with real people. And it is important to interpret and analyse the changes taking place in the client.
