The Sexual Addiction Controversy: A Disorder or Not?

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.210531.088How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Sexual Addiction, Sex Addict, Sexual Impulsivity, Compulsive Sexual Behavior, compulsive sex, excessive sexual behavior, hypersexual, hypersexuality

Abstract

The status of sexual addiction as a mental disorder remains controversial. Regardless of the popularity of the term sexual addiction today, the fact is that the proposal of sexual addiction diagnosis has been unclear. This has sparked a debate among clinicians, there are clinicians who support the inclusion of sexual addiction as a mental disorder and clinicians who believe that sexual addiction should not be considered as a mental disorder. This paper aims to examine the evidence and arguments from both sides through literature review, so that it can be concluded whether sexual addiction is an independent mental disorder or not. Based on literature review that has been conducted, it can be concluded that declaring sexual addiction as an independent mental disorder is a statement that is still premature and has potential negative impacts, especially because the scientific boundaries that underlie the diagnosis are still unclear and inconsistent. Another reason is due to the fact that other psychological problems and emotional regulation problems often comorbid in patients who have excessive sexuality problems, so there is a possibility that what we have known as sexual addiction is actually only a manifestation of another mental disorder and is not an independent mental disorder. The contribution of this research is to clarify misunderstanding that happens among clinicians and society about the term sexual addiction, especially about its status that is not classified as a mental disorder.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Stefany Valentia
AU  - Elizabeth Kristi Poerwandari
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/05/31
TI  - The Sexual Addiction Controversy: A Disorder or Not?
BT  - Proceedings of the Asia-Pacific Research in Social Sciences and Humanities Universitas Indonesia Conference (APRISH 2019)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 706
EP  - 711
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210531.088
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.210531.088
ID  - Valentia2021
ER  -