Is Porn
Bad for You?
By Wendy Maltz, Psychotherapy Networker
Posted on May 23, 2010
Source
"Porn is an easy outlet, a one-way outlet. What a rush! What a
release! The Internet puts an endless stream of images at my fingertips.
I've conveniently conned myself thinking it's okay, but deep down I know
it's wrong. It makes me feel dirty and has hurt
my relationship with
my wife. I beat myself up afterward, hate myself, and swear that was
the last time. But before I know it, I'm back at it again. I'm scared
where it's leading. Can you help me?"—Scott, 44 years
old.
Scott, a successful lawyer with a wife and two children,
showed up at my office for his first session confused and angry about
his relationship
with pornography. He could see the damage his Internet porn habit
was having on his marriage, health, and career, but he couldn't stay
away
from it. His story is typical of men and women—of all ages, backgrounds,
incomes, and lifestyles—who are seeking counseling for serious
problems related to pornography.
When I began counseling in the mid-1970s, cases like
Scott's were rare and almost inconceivable. Hardcore pornography
was difficult to obtain.
But in recent decades, new electronic technologies, such as cable
television, computers, and iPhones, have transformed it into a product
that's available
to anyone—anytime, anywhere, and often cheap or free. It's
become a substantial part of our economy, boasting
annual
revenues in excess
of
$13 billion in the United States and
$100
billion worldwide.
The revolution in accessibility has led to record consumption. According
to statistics on the Internet Filter Review site, 40 million Americans
visit Internet porn sites at least once a month. Some porn users visit
sites for only a few minutes at a time. Others, like Scott, visit porn
sites daily, spending more than 15 hours per week.
One-third of all downloads each month and
one-quarter of all online
searches each day are
for porn.
And, according to a 2008 Nielsen Online survey, a
record-breaking 25
percent of employees in the United States are accessing porn
at work, despite the risks involved.
Not surprisingly, concerns about the effect of porn
on individuals and relationships are also on the rise. According
to a 2004 survey in Men's
Health, more than 70 percent of the men surveyed said they've looked
at more porn since the advent of the Internet, and one in two expressed
concern about their use of it. The American Academy of Matrimonial
Lawyers and the British Nielsen NetRatings organization have identified
it as
a major cause of divorce and relationship difficulties. An MSNBC
study in 2000 revealed that 70 percent of porn users keep their use
secret and that from 8 to 15 percent of regular Internet porn users develop
compulsive sexual behaviors that significantly impact
their lives. In total, up to half of all regular pornography users
report some
type of
negative consequence or concern about their use. No wonder sexual
addiction experts, such as Patrick Carnes, have begun calling pornography
addiction "our
newest and most challenging mental health problem."
Changes in how people access and use pornography have taken the therapeutic
community by surprise. The explosion in porn use has happened so fast
that many therapists have been caught unprepared; they may not yet comprehend
the extent of the problems porn can cause, or how deeply its use can
harm individuals and their intimate partners. Despite the increase in
the number of people suffering from anxiety, depression, sexual problems,
relationship distress, and other serious consequences of habitual porn
use, few therapists feel comfortable and confident addressing porn-related
concerns.
How We Feel about Porn
Pornography
draws strong responses—from the public at large and
within the therapeutic community. Many of us have such strong feelings
about pornography that we automatically label, condemn, or reject anyone
who sees it differently. If we're critical of porn, we might judge people
who like it as "excessively permissive," "exploitive," "addicted
to sex," or "misogynistic." If we're supportive of porn,
we may see those who don't share our view as "sexually uptight," "religiously
conservative," "radically feminist," or "against
free speech." Unlike other common mental health concerns, such as
depression or substance abuse, we have no reasonably coherent and agreed
upon clinical perspective for what constitutes a "porn problem" or
how to approach it.
Recently, at a professional training, I asked a group
of therapists to share their knee-jerk feelings about pornography.
The answers came
quickly and from all over the emotional map: "disgusted," "excited," "angry," "anxious," "saddened," "afraid," "horny," "repulsed," "ashamed," "shocked," "amused," "curious," and "ambivalent." I
wasn't surprised by the range of feelings: I've had all those feelings
myself, even though I've been a sex and relationship therapist for
35 years.
In the past, understanding and dealing with our personal reactions to
porn may not have been that important to our success as psychotherapists.
But today, when clients who develop problems with porn range from 90-year-old
men to 9-year-old girls, examining our own attitudes about porn is critical
to our success as healers. Without an informed and accurate understanding
of porn and its effects, we can easily discount clients' concerns or
respond to them in unhelpful, emotionally reactive ways. A study in the
January-March 2009 issue of Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity by Michelle
Ayres and Shelley Haddock found that therapists' personal attitudes about
pornography play the strongest, most significant role of any factor,
including training and clinical experience, in influencing their approach
to treatment.
The workshop discussion got me thinking about how significantly my attitudes
about pornography have changed during the course of my life and counseling
career. To a large extent, my personal journey reflects the evolution
of pornography from a product that was hard to get to an experience that
can be hard to avoid.
A Peephole to Adult Pleasure
It
was 1961, and I was 11 years old—the average age of first exposure
to pornography—when a neighbor girl showed me some picture
cards she'd found in her grandfather's nightstand. They featured
pretty women
in frilly corsets, posed to reveal breasts spilling out and bottoms
exposed. I giggled with my friend, but found them both shocking and
stimulating.
Several images became locked in my brain, making them easy to recall
to this day. Soon after, I discovered a stash of Playboy magazines
hidden in a home where I babysat. I enthusiastically perused them
from cover
to cover, praying that my secret activities would never be discovered.
I barely understood the captions, but I liked the colorful cartoons
showing shameless, wide-eyed females.
As I grew older, I had only infrequent and experimental
contact with pornography, usually when babysitting or at a girlfriend's
house when
her parents were away. To me, pornography was for adults, definitely
a guy thing, not something a "good girl" should pursue. In
the East Coast middle-class suburb where I grew up, getting my hands
on more pornography would have taken some effort, and even though my
parents were more open and communicative about sex than most, I knew
they wouldn't approve of my looking at "dirty" magazines
or reading steamy novels. Consequently, scarcity, fear, and guilt
served
as formidable barriers to their use.
Later, in high school, my wrestler boyfriend took
me to a party with his teammates where we stood, beers in hand, in
a living room and watched
grainy black-and-white "stag films" from Europe. This live-action
form of pornography was much more exciting than the still shots and written
descriptions I'd seen before. Motion pictures made sex real and brought
it into the here and now. We stood transfixed by the images, trying to
look cool while heating up inside. The images were as disturbing as they
were arousing—a young woman slowly stripped and fondled by
an older man, and several men being sexual with one woman. It seemed
like everything
played out in slow motion. Flushed with sexual heat and embarrassment,
I looked over at my boyfriend. He seemed uncomfortable and embarrassed,
and a little afraid. We left the party early, never discussing what
we'd witnessed or felt.
In my early exposures, I saw pornography as a forbidden
product, offering a peephole into the off-limits adult world of sexual
pleasure. Like smoking
cigarettes in back of the schoolyard or taking a shot of alcohol
from Dad's liquor cabinet, looking at pornography felt rebellious,
but at
the same time, a necessary rite of passage. As a way to understand
sex, those "dirty" stories, pictures, and films offered
a far more compelling view of sexuality than the cryptic and incomplete
sex-education
materials I was shown in health class. In spite of how the images
degraded women and portrayed men in a position of sexual power, pornography
gave
me a vision of sex that validated sexual passion and pleasure.
Liberating Adult Entertainment
In
the early 1970s, I graduated from college and moved to Berkeley,
California, to attend social work graduate school and
pursue a career
as a mental health therapist. The sexual revolution—at least as
it was widely portrayed in the media—was in full swing, and had
transformed the public perception of sex and its possibilities. Anais
Nin, David Reuben, Shere Hite, Betty Dodson, Alex Comfort, Judy Chicago,
and others were raising my consciousness about the great possibilities
inherent in sexual liberation and freedom from ignorance, old hang-ups,
and unnecessary taboos. My peers and I thought that almost anybody could
become a healthier, happier, more productive human being—and society
itself might change for the better—if only people could transcend
their parents' puritanical training about sex and overcome unnecessary
embarrassments and inhibitions.
It was an exciting time of sexual awakening. Sexual
pleasure became a recreational sport and "free love" a spiritual practice.
I became involved in a back-to-nature movement that validated the natural
beauty of the body. I soaked naked in hot tubs with friends, hiked bare-chested
in coastal forests, and skinny-dipped in mountain streams. I volunteered
at the Berkeley Women's Health Collective, helping women perform their
own pelvic exams and learn how to recognize common gynecological problems.
I delighted in what seemed radically new ideas then—that it's
okay to learn about and regain control of our bodies, that nothing
is ugly
or disgusting about sex (and genitals), and that, like men, women
have sexual feelings and needs.
During this period of expanding sexual awareness, hardcore pornography
entered the mainstream marketplace. While capitalizing on the changes
in social consciousness, this expansion in commercial pornography seemed
to reinforce the new spirit of sexual openness, freedom,
and acceptance.
Penthouse magazine made Playboy look tame by brazenly revealing the pubic
hair of its monthly pets. In 1975, when Playgirl magazine, featuring
sexy pictures of men (many with blatant erections), appeared on the market,
I wondered whether pornography might be headed in a direction of sexual
equality.
Soft and hardcore movies started appearing in adult-only movie
theaters in major cities across the country. For the first time, porn titles and
stars were showcased on marquees, not hidden away in dark-alley cigar
shops. Now the public had easy access to gay porn films (Boys in the
Sand and Pink Narcissus), erotic cartoon movies (Fritz the Cat), and
full-color features like Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones, and Behind
the Green Door. Adult movies emerged as a new and wildly popular form
of entertainment. Though Larry, my live-in boyfriend (now my husband),
and I were involved in social work, feminist causes, and men's
consciousness raising, we'd occasionally slip into a nearby Mitchell Brothers adult
movie theater to watch a talked-about release. Any trepidation that these
films were inconsistent with our social values was overridden by our
curiosity about this exciting new pornography and our desire to feel
we were becoming sexually liberated.
A Therapeutic Intervention
My perspective on pornography underwent another shift in the early
1980s, when, as a newly married and practicing clinical social worker, I started
specializing in sex therapy. I'd initially worked as a drug-and-alcohol
counselor, but switched to sexuality counseling when I noticed a strong
connection between people's self-esteem and self-confidence and how good
they felt about themselves sexually.
Sex therapy was a new, exciting, and much-needed clinical
specialty, providing solid information, advice, and a safe place
to discuss and
get help for a wide array of sexual-functioning problems and concerns.
Leaders in the field—people like William Masters and Virginia Johnson,
Lonnie Barbach, Helen Singer Kaplan, Joseph and Leslie LoPiccolo, and
Bernie Zilbergeld—were opening doors and providing information
that had long been needed.
My training to become a certified sex therapist with the American
Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists included attending a required
Sexual Attitudes Reassessment (SAR) seminar. With my fellow aspiring
sex therapists, I watched a wide assortment of sexually explicit movies,
some blatantly pornographic, others made and intended specifically for
educational and instructional purposes. We watched films on masturbation,
heterosexual and homosexual lovemaking, oral and anal sex, sex in the
aging and disabled populations, sadomasochism, bondage, and more extreme
sexual practices. Then we discussed our reactions in small groups. The
seminar enabled us to explore our attitudes, feelings, and beliefs about
all kinds of sex, and to gain confidence in helping clients with sexual
problems. I found the direct and graphic nature of the SAR helpful for
recognizing and challenging harmful myths and stereotypes, such as the
mistaken idea that only young and beautiful people can have really good
sex.
I began to consider pornography as an intervention that could be used for educational and therapeutic purposes. In sex
therapy manuals, trainings,
and conferences, it was touted as a product that could help
clients reduce inhibitions about sexual practices, avoid boredom, and spice
up their
sex lives. It was considered "harmless visual stimulation"—an
easy way to expand sexual awareness and safely explore sexual fantasies
and desires, inside or outside a committed relationship.
To the extent that sex therapists had concern about the dangers of watching
pornography, professional discussions were limited to whether porn use
could lead to sexual violence. Then, as now, no clear and reliable link
emerged. The consensus was that pornography became a problem only when
the viewer couldn't distinguish between fantasy sex and real sex (believing,
for example, that women enjoy being raped), or was using it in ways that
endangered children (leaving it out where it could be seen), or harmed
trust in an intimate relationship (pressuring a partner to do something
he or she didn't want to do).
In tune with the times, I sometimes assumed that when
one person in a relationship was into porn and the other wasn't,
the reluctant partner
was likely "sexually uptight," "withholding," or "unadventurous." Therapeutic
strategies often focused on negotiating the type, use, purchase,
and storage of the pornography, rarely on discouraging its use. I
might,
for instance, help a couple reach a decision that they would only
use porn together and would choose movies that they both enjoyed.
Like many of my sex therapy colleagues, I kept a box
of classic pornographic novels in my office closet. I'd lend copies
of Fanny Hill, The Pearl,
and Lady Chatterley's Lover to female clients who were learning to
become orgasmic. Hot sexual reading coupled with genital stimulation
was and
still is promoted in the field as an effective therapeutic intervention
for boosting erotic excitement and helping a woman "make it over
the hump" to have her first orgasm. I suggested pornography, as
I might a heating pad or a vibrator, because of its stimulating effects.
Porn, with its repeated descriptions of seduction and sexual activity,
offered a way a woman could stay focused on sex and leave distracting
thoughts and worries behind. The result of sexual functioning—climaxing—justified whatever means it took to get there.
I did
have occasional misgivings, however, about advocating pornography
in treatment. As a product, it was usually poorly made
and portrayed
sex in unrealistic, inaccurate, unsafe, and impersonal ways. For
example, even though surveys show that monogamous partners are actually
the most
satisfied with their sex lives, porn kept featuring extramarital
sex, multiple partners, and impulsive sex between strangers as more
exciting.
It often portrayed women as mere objects and playthings for male
sexual enjoyment. It gave little or no consideration to hygiene and
protection
from pregnancy and disease. It promoted a callous attitude toward
sexual exploitation, coercion, and aggression. Recommending pornography
to clients
began to make me feel, for lack of a better analogy, somewhat like
a pimp, introducing clients to a "sleazy" worldview of sex. But
I silenced my concerns, reminding myself that an open-minded sex therapist
could regard pornography as simply a "tool of the trade."
A Cousin of Sexual Abuse
As time progressed, I became increasingly uncomfortable with pornography.
On the few occasions when Larry and I saw pornography together, we now
found it disturbing and distracting to the soul-stirring physical love
we regularly enjoyed. The dialogue in porn didn't make us blush, but
the interactions seemed increasingly humiliating
and violent, with behaviors
such as a man ejaculating on a woman's face becoming more common. Rather
than inspire, pornography appeared to compromise one's private erotic
imagination and values, blurring boundaries between fantasy and reality
and lowering standards for sexual interaction. I didn't like how porn
images would linger in my mind long after we'd turned off a rented videotape,
taking my attention away from Larry and fixing it onto images of the
porn actors and activities I'd just seen on screen.
At the same time I was experiencing personal concerns,
many of my clients began complaining about pornography. They appreciated
well-made, instructional,
sexual-enrichment books and videos and sexy romantic novels, but
their contact with pornography often left them feeling "dirty," sad,
disgusted, or angry. They told me they were turned off by its lack
of human caring, its racism, and especially
the way it depicted women and children as targets
for sexual exploitation.
In the mid-1980s, when I began specializing in treating
survivors of sexual abuse, I became increasingly aware of the role
that porn had in
abuse. One client said that when he was a teenager, a 50-year-old
next-door-neighbor man had "groomed" him into oral sex by showing him a stash
of pornographic magazines. Women told me their perpetrators—often
fathers, grandfathers, brothers, and boyfriends—used pornography
as a template for the specific type of sexual behavior they coerced
them to perform. Some clients recalled being forced by their perpetrator
to
pose for pornographic pictures during their experiences of abuse.
It was during the 1980s that I researched and wrote
two recovery books, Incest and Sexuality and The Sexual
Healing Journey,
for survivors and
their partners wanting to reclaim sexuality as something positive
and healthy. When porn came up in the interviews and surveys I conducted
for the books, survivors overwhelmingly spoke negatively about pornography,
saying, for example, that reading pornographic stories or watching
porn
on videos and cable television "felt like the abuse all over
again."
Added to my pile of concerns about porn, the realization
that porn could be used as weapon against vulnerable children and
women was the last
straw. The clearer I became about conditions necessary for experiencing
healthy sexuality—consent, equality, respect, trust, safety—the
more doubt I had about advocating pornography as a sexual-enhancement
product. How can I support something that portrays sex as
a commodity, people as objects, and violence, humiliation, and recklessness
as
exciting? What am I doing encouraging people to condition their arousal
to self-centered,
sensually blunted, loveless sex? Do I really want to be advocating
a product that's associated with causing sexual harm and relationship
problems?
My primary concern about porn wasn't that it was sexually
graphic, explicit, or hot: it was that porn conveyed harmful
ideas about sex and could lead
to hurtful and ultimately unrewarding sexual behaviors. During the
1990s, I switched from recommending porn to suggesting scenes in
popular movies,
such as the scene in Mississippi Masala in which Denzel Washington
makes love to a woman while singing "Happy Birthday" to her. This
scene, and others that emphasized mutual caring and readiness, showed
highly erotic kissing and full-body, skin-to-skin contact, and celebrated
sex as part of a larger relationship, were much more consistent with
what I thought could arouse clients without causing them harm. In addition,
frustrated with the lack of materials honoring love-based sexuality,
I compiled two anthologies of erotic love poetry to recommend to clients
and others for inspiration: Passionate Hearts and Intimate
Kisses feature
classic and contemporary poems in which "heart connection" is
at the core of sexual experience.
One day, my concerns about pornography reached a tipping point. I grabbed
the box of pornographic novels I'd kept in my office closet, marched
outdoors, and tossed it into a trash bin. No regrets! From then on, I
felt that personally and therapeutically it was best to avoid pornography.
I made a commitment to obtain and clinically recommend only sexually
explicit materials that educate and inspire while honoring respectful,
responsible, and caring conditions for sexual interaction.
A Possessive Mistress
I may
have thought I was done with porn, but it wasn't done with me! In
the late 1990s, people began calling my office seeking
help for
problems they felt had been caused by porn use. One after another,
the requests
came in, often several per week. Some pleas for help came from
porn users themselves, worried about their own dependencies and the
possible
repercussions—for
example, losing interest in their partner, experiencing a compulsive
need for sex, and getting into risky and hurtful sexual practices.
But many calls came from the intimate partners of porn users, and
these callers,
primarily women, were in obvious emotional distress. Engagements
had been broken, weddings and plans to have children had been called
off,
and otherwise successful, long-term marriages were teetering on
the brink of divorce.
The number of inquiries took me by surprise, so I began to ask my colleagues
if they were having similar experiences. Many were, and we began to talk
about how porn had changed from a side issue, which arose only occasionally
in sessions with clients, to the primary reason many people were now
seeking therapy.
Despite my decision to stop using porn personally and professionally,
until this point, I still frequently thought of it as a temporary, experimental/supplemental
sexual activity, and even a benign adolescent phase in sexual development.
But the growing client base experiencing problems with it and the depth
of their pain opened my eyes to the fact that, for many, porn was becoming
a critical, even essential part of their sexual repertoires. With science-fiction
strangeness, porn was competing with real-life partners, and it was even
emerging as the most important object of some clients' sexual desires.
Perhaps we should all have seen it coming. Within
a short period of time, with the aid of high-tech electronic devices,
such as VCRs, cable
television, and the Internet, pornography had broken through old
barriers of scarcity, expense, and fear of exposure and evolved into
a product
that was available for pleasure on demand. With 24-hours-a-day
availability, media saturation, and unlimited variety, pornographic
material was
starting to overwhelm people's ability to resist it. As one man shared: "About
five years ago, I discovered the Internet, and that's when the shit hit
the fan for me. Suddenly it was "Close your eyes and imagine
something and go look for it, and with a click of the mouse, there
it is!' And
best of all, it was free and nobody the wiser."
At this point, porn started looking to me like a compliant
mistress, who promised an exciting, personalized, highly charged
erotic alternative
to the mundane realities and complex challenges of sex with a real
partner. Always ready, willing, and reliably sexy, the porn mistress
catered to
the user's needs. It never got old or tired, required no emotional
or sensual attention for "herself," never said no or rejected
her "lover," and was always willing to explore any and all
sexual acts, or even invent new ones. I was shocked one day when one
man disclosed that, even though he loved his wife and experienced satisfying
sex with her, when he masturbated to porn, it was "the best
sex ever."
The reactions of intimate partners to what was happening
was almost identical to that of clients I'd counseled whose partners
had been having
affairs. Women came to me shocked and traumatized when they'd learned
about their partners' relationships with porn. I remember one in
particular who clutched her chest as she sobbed, "His betrayal feels like a
knife has been thrust in my heart." It didn't matter that her husband's "mistress" was
on celluloid and pixels on a screen; he'd still betrayed her by channeling
his sexual attention and energy away from her, onto someone else,
and then lying about it! She felt angry, hurt, alone, powerless,
and unable
to compete with the perfect, airbrushed young bodies of the women
featured in the videos she'd found her husband masturbating to. Her
trust in and
respect for him were gone, and she told me she felt as sexually abandoned,
insulted, and betrayed as if he'd been with another woman. As with
an affair, female partners often spoke of their partner's porn use
as absolutely
incompatible with their ability to stay in the relationship.
Many of the male porn users in committed relationships
were surprised by the intensity of their female partner's reactions.
They generally
felt entitled to use porn and were ready with rationalizations for
their "It's
safer than a real affair," "All guys do it," and "It's
nothing personal" were among the most common reasons they gave
to try to get their partners to understand and accept their actions.
My deeper understanding of the emotional pain that partners of porn
users were feeling, coupled with an awareness of the growing number of
couples for whom porn use had become a significant relationship issue,
changed the way I focused my treatment. Instead of automatically considering
porn use as something to be negotiated, I began to address
it as I might an extramarital affair. I tried to help both partners understand their
relationship crisis, process their feelings, empathize with each other,
and rebuild trust, security, and intimacy. With this approach, I reasoned
that many porn users would come to see their behavior, and especially
their accompanying deceptions, rationalizations, and emotional withdrawal,
as inconsistent with their personal goals and the needs of the relationship.
I thought that, on their own, they'd decide to give up porn, allowing
their partners to process their feelings of betrayal, overcome resentments,
and move toward forgiving and trusting again.
Even with my newfound awareness about how porn could
assert itself as an easy sexual outlet, I remained naive about one
vitally important issue. I assumed that once couples could address
negative repercussions
and get the "real" sexual relationship back on track, the person
who had the porn interest would no longer "need" or "desire" it,
and could easily give it up. I couldn't have been more wrong! Some clients
were able to "ditch-the-mistress," but many weren't. It
became apparent that I'd underestimated the power of the new pornography.
Something
more insidious was going on.
A Drug
Soon after the turn of
the new millennium, a new client helped me see what else was at play
that made quitting porn so difficult,
even for
people who wanted to do so. Sam, a shy young man whom I'd been seeing
for a few weeks, told me, "Doing porn feels like an incredible rush
of life blowing through my veins, and the good part is, I can always
go back for more." His description of his porn experience sounded
eerily similar to the language used by the patients with drug and alcohol
problems I'd worked with through the years. Over time, more of my clients
experiencing the impact of porn in their lives began using words and
phrases usually associated with hardcore drug addiction. They often referred
to using porn as a "high" and a "rush." They started
needing a stronger product in higher doses to get the same effect, and
when they decided to quit, they frequently complained of continual cravings,
preoccupations, and sensations of "withdrawal." "I
tried going 'cold turkey' with porn," one man told me, "but
the urges were stronger than when I quit cigarettes and cocaine."
In 2004, concerned about what we were seeing in our practices, Larry
and I began working on a recovery book entitled The Porn Trap:
The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography (HarperCollins, 2008).
Our goal was to create a sex-positive resource for individuals and couples
that would help them understand how porn has changed and empower them
to address porn problems directly and compassionately with effective
strategies for recovery and relationship healing.
What we discovered in researching the book confirmed
my feelings that porn use had many of the same properties as drug
use. Addiction specialists
and neuroscientists, such as Harvey Milkman, Peter Shizgal, Patrick
Carnes, T. M. Grundner, and Helen Fisher, were finding that pornography
did indeed
have a druglike effect on the body and mind. Despite being ingested
through the eyes and ears instead of the mouth or bloodstream, porn
stimulates
the reward and pleasure centers in the brain, instantly and dramatically,
increasing the production of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated
with both sexual arousal and drug highs. In addition, using porn
for sexual stimulation has been shown to increase production of other "feel-good" chemicals,
such as adrenaline, endorphins, testosterone, and serotonin; with
sexual climax, it releases powerful hormones related to falling in
love and
bonding, such as oxytocin and vasopressin.
Research shows that, like compulsive gambling and
shopping, porn use can lead to a "process addiction," in which a person becomes
addicted to a set of behaviors (e.g. consuming porn) that, in turn, powerfully
alter brain chemistry. The Internet and other electronic devices allow
porn users to click through a never-ending stream of stimulating material
as they look for just the right porn site, the sexual activity of interest,
or the ultimate fantasy partner. Like a carefully calibrated slot machine,
it rewards only intermittently, compelling the user to stay engaged and
not give up. Users can end up looking at porn for longer and longer periods
of time, often seeking riskier content to "hit the jackpot" of
landing on an extremely stimulating image.
Porn wasn't just operating like a drug—it was
operating like a designer drug, able to give the user multiple types
of results: novelty,
excitement, escape, mastery, and (with orgasm) relaxation. All
the new information about porn we were gathering helped explain why
people
of
all ages and from all walks of life could develop such strong attachments
to porn that they craved it compulsively, couldn't control their
use, and couldn't stop, despite negative consequences.
My newfound knowledge of pornography's druglike effects helped me bring
more compassion to the issues porn users faced. Not only were their partners
in distress: anyone trying to quit using porn faced his or her own difficult
emotional and physiological struggles. I started recommending that clients
supplement their individual and couples counseling work with attending
12-step sexual addiction recovery programs, such as Sex Addicts Anonymous,
Sexaholics Anonymous, and Recovering Couples Anonymous, or porn recovery
groups of their own choosing. I began encouraging intimate partners to
attend Codependents of Sex Addicts meetings and to check out supportive
websites, such as www.pornaddicthubby.com. With my background in drug
and alcohol counseling, I know that support groups can be critical to
successful recovery, helping overcome social isolation and shame, building
accountability supports, and sharing triumphs.
I began working with clients to develop effective
strategies for preventing relapses. Many clients find the "trigger-zone" model
and exercises that are described in The Porn Trap beneficial for
identifying how close
they are to having a possible relapse and knowing just what steps
to take to get to safer ground. Given the importance of healthy sexuality
to overall recovery and quality of life, advanced work is done to
heal
troublesome sexual fantasies and develop healthy strategies for self-pleasuring,
relaxed sensual touch, and enjoying sexual intimacy with a partner.
Even
though my research opened my eyes to porn's potential addictiveness,
I know that not everyone gets addicted. Someone can
have a problem with
porn—for example, broken integrity, relationship difficulties,
work problems, or an interest in child porn—and still not have
addiction issues. But I began to understand more clearly that, for
most of my clients and other porn users and partners with whom I
spoke while
doing research for the book, porn use almost always carries with
it some negative consequences that can't be avoided.
A Threat to Public Health
Since
The Porn Trap was published, I've had numerous professional and personal
conversations about porn that have sensitized
me to the expansion
and significance of problems caused by porn. I recently spoke with
a woman while we both worked out on treadmills at the YMCA who told
me
how, after her father had died, she'd found a stash of hardcore porn
videos and magazines in his bedroom. "No matter how much I tried
not to let it bother me, it changed the way I think about him," she
said. A man came up to me after a workshop and asked what he could
do to help his 13-year-old son break a habit of masturbating to bondage
porn. In my practice, I've seen several soldiers back from the Iraq
war
suffering from porn addictions they developed there as a way to deal
with traumatic stress. And some people told me there were times they've
seriously contemplated suicide as a way to escape the isolating nervousness
of their obsessions with porn.
I never wanted to be out beating the drum against pornography. In the
beginning of my career, if anyone had suggested I'd be here now, I'd
have laughed at them. But from my own clients, my research, and my personal
experience, I've come to the conclusion that pornography is moving from
an individual and couples' problem to a public health problem, capable
of deeply harming the emotional, sexual, and relationship well-being
of millions of men, women, and children.
As a sex therapist, I'm amazed that what I
once saw as a liberating sexual experience and a therapeutic option
for improving
sex with an
intimate partner has evolved into something that can easily hijack
and harm people's sexuality. Increasing numbers of clients
report that porn
has become "the great spoiler" for them sexually by spawning
unhealthy interests and reducing their natural responsiveness. One man
confided that he could no longer get an erection with a real partner. "I
want to go back to how it used to be before I was into porn—when
just being near a woman I cared about turned me on. How can I get my
old sexuality back?" he asked. Another told me he'd probably remain
single all his life: "I've lost all interest in dating. Porn
is easier and more convenient than dealing with actual people. And
even
if I met a nice woman, I doubt she'd really want me, given how twisted
my sexual desires have become."
Many female partners of porn users tell me they're
turning off to sex with their partner because of the increased pressure
they feel to act
like porn stars and respond to porn-inspired sexual advances. And
women looking for long-term partners are worried about how pornography
is shrinking
the pool of desirable men. "It's hard to find a guy who isn't into
porn and genuinely doesn't like it. But that's who I want as a lifemate
and father to my children," one woman explained.
I'm especially troubled by the way contact with porn appears to be harming
young people's mental and sexual health. Teens have been identified as
one of the largest consumer groups of porn. A 2009 research study of
one thousand 13- to 16-year-olds in the United Kingdom by CyberSentinel
found that teens are spending an average of one hour and forty minutes
a week (87 hours a year) looking at online porn. Studies in the United
States report similar exposure rates, with a 2004 study by Columbia University
finding that 45 percent of teens admit that they have friends who regularly
view and download porn.
Tech-savvy and naturally curious, young people are
increasingly turning to Internet porn to learn about sex and as the
primary focus of their
masturbation. Some teenagers have begun showing signs that exposure
to pornography could be undermining their ability to make healthy
choices about sexual activity. For example, a 2009 Harris Interactive
survey
revealed that despite the legal and personal risks involved, 19
percent of teenagers are engaged in sexting—sending and receiving
sexually suggestive, nude or nearly nude photos through text messaging
or e-mail.
And, according to recent data made available in 2009 by the Centers
for Disease Control, the age of first sexual involvement has fallen,
the
teen-pregnancy rate has increased (following nearly 15 years of
large decreases), and sexually transmitted disease rates have increased.
Because of cultural shame and silence, children aren't receiving messages
informing them that there's a difference between porn fantasies and the
real world, where interpersonal dynamics matter and sex has consequences.
Without these touchstones, kids may fail to realize how harmful and unfair
it is to measure their own sexuality (or anyone else's) against porn
standards and how dangerous it can be to try to mimic what they see in
porn. A colleague recently told me about a college student who'd inadvertently
maimed and almost killed himself trying to act out a sex scene he'd viewed
in a porn video.
The only way to prevent the spread of porn-related problems is for people
to be informed and to get help early, and for society to be alert to
the problems. I'm not in favor of censorship, but with other professionals
and health advocates, I support honest, age-appropriate discussions of
pornography and its potential repercussions in public forums and health
education classes. I believe we need a government body devoted specifically
to researching the effects of pornography and developing policies, prevention
campaigns, and treatment resources. I see a great need for parents, teachers,
employers, clergy, healthcare workers, law enforcers, and therapists
to start addressing pornography problems with the same kind of shame-free
directness with which we've learned to tackle other public
health concerns,
such as cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, domestic violence, and
drug abuse.
As therapists, perhaps our most important role is in providing clients
a safe place to discuss and examine their concerns. It's best to analyze
porn-related situations on a case-by-case basis, taking into consideration
a client's personal values, sexual experience, sexual orientation, and
relationship status. I often rely on the following questions to help
clients increase awareness and begin to evaluate their involvement with
porn. Is porn increasing or decreasing your self-esteem and integrity?
Is it upsetting or alienating your intimate partner (or harming your
future chances of being in a healthy relationship)? Have you become preoccupied,
out-of-control, dependent on, or compulsively engaged with porn? How
is porn shaping your sexual thoughts, desires, and behaviors? What negative
consequences could occur if you continue to use porn? Only when clients
determine they want help quitting porn do we proceed in that direction,
utilizing the dynamic strategies that exist for achieving sexual recovery
and healing. As mental health professionals I believe we're most helpful
when we resist our tendencies to automatically condemn or advocate porn.
Our effectiveness depends on our ability to join with clients in regularly
evaluating porn's impact on their lives. While I remain aware that porn
use isn't a problem for everyone, I keep in mind that, given its unprecedented
power and accessibility, it can become a problem for anyone.
Wendy Maltz, L.C.S.W., D.S.T., is an internationally
recognized psychotherapist, sex therapist, and author of numerous
books on sexuality. The
Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by
Pornography (with Larry Maltz, HarperCollins, 2008)
will be available in paperback in January 2010. Wendy and Larry
Maltz offer professional training
seminars on treating pornography problems. Contact: wendymaltz@healthysex.com
www.HealthySex.com.
© 2010 Psychotherapy Networker All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/146957/
