No, of course they don’t. But they just don’t accept the person’s self diagnosis, do they? They don’t begin to treat them based up upon what the patient THINKS they have. The psychologist finds out what the problem is and treats the person accordingly.

Grace, I answered your question “So was it a mental illness back then Matthew because the DSM said so?”. The answer is still yes. It was a disorder in the DSM I and II. Second, the DSM didn’t have it “wrong”. Every 15 years or so, psychologists review and discuss emerging trends and research and stuff gets taken out and put in. Hundreds of items are up for inclusion or exclusion. Some items may get merged into other existing categories or may be granted their own.

What you seem to be misunderstanding here is my point that if indeed “pornography addiction” was a terrible blight on society, why isn’t up for review for the DSM V? It’s not there is it Grace? So this would mean that most psychologists don’t see it as a real problem. Just because one researcher thinks it is a problem or a concern doesn’t mean it is. This may change in the future, but that’s really hard to believe when as I’ve said before we’ve had over 50 years of commercial pornography with very few negative outcomes for society. That’s at least two generations (X and Y) who grew up with it, yet there doesn’t seem to be real problems (I may suggest here that sex education REALLY needs to be a whole better and really need to educate the two sexes that they ARE different from each other and generally want different things in a relationship).

What gets me here is people are trying to link porn with social or psychological problems and things aren’t fitting together. Generally the two don’t link nice and neatly and a whole other factors have to be included. Rarely when X happens it will equal Y. I also find it rather disturbing that people can find nudity or sex “disgusting”. It may be presented as a fantasy or unrealistically, but still sex and nudity are quite natural things.

I think you’ve again missed my point. But I will address some of your claims again.

Firstly, if someone fronts up to a psychologist and says “i’m addicted to pornography” the psychologist is not going to say “no you’re not” and tap the DSM. They will try to help that person. I know this from first hand experience.

Is it a burden on society? It’s a burden on the individuals who say they suffer from sex addiction/porn addiction/compulsion, whatever you want to call it.

“Addiction has got nothing to do with availability. ”

Since we are now in the realm of demanding essay standard responses from one another, can you verify this claim with any research of your own Matthew?

Matthew, as to your last paragraph regarding Reisman, you are confusing me with another poster here, I have not referenced Reisman, indeed I do not know who he/she is.

However, if you are after journal articles, Here are a couple. Presently there is debate as to whether sexual addiction can be listed in the DSM ie. how to define it and the concerns by professionals that it will be seen as an excuse for adultery. It is not yet in the DSM, but sex addiction – which frequently mentions internet pornography use – is certainly mentioned in research. Just because it cannot be defined for the DSM, which is a diagnostic manual, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Cybersex: High tech sex addiction
Author: David L. Delmonico
Published in: Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, Volume 4, Issue 2 April 1997 , pages 159 – 167
“Cybersex is an area in which sexual addicts increasingly act out. This article explores the various forms of cybersex that are available to clients. Three basic forms of cybersex are presented: (1) online pornography exchange, (b) real time sexual exchanges, and (c) multimedia software. Each of these areas is explored and explained. Finally, this article explores possible explanations for the power of cybersex among sexual addicts. Four basic explanations are explored: (a) isolation, (b) fantasy, (c) anonymity, and (d) low cost. Suggestions for future research in the area of cybersex addiction are presented. ”

Couple recovery from sexual addiction / co addiction: Results of a survey of 88 marriages
Authors: Jennifer P. Schneider; Burton H. Schneider
Published in: Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, Volume 3, Issue 2 April 1996 , pages 111 – 126

Abstract
Results of a survey of 142 married sex addicts and coaddicts suggest that for couples in crisis because of multiple affairs, use of pornography and masturbation in preference to relational sex, visits to prostitutes, arrests for voyeurism or exibitionism, or other compulsive sexual behaviors, survival of the relationship can be enhanced when both members identify themselves as “addict” and “coaddict,” attend individual and joint 12-step meetings and counseling, seek feedback from other couples, and commit to ongoing work on individual problems and on the relationship.

An empirical investigation of hypersexuality
Authors: Nicole J. Rinehart a; Marita P. McCabe a
Published in: Sexual and Relationship Therapy, Volume 13, Issue 4 November 1998 , pages 369 – 384

Abstract
The aim of this study was to investigate the nature of hypersexuality and the personality factors associated with the desire for and experience of high frequency sexual behavior. Participants in the study were 69 male and 93 female university students. Respondents reported on their desire for and experience of masturbation, oral sex, sexual intercourse, pornography, indecent phone calls or letters, prostitution, exhibitionism, voyeurism, as well as providing self-report measures which evaluated their levels of state and trait anxiety, depression, obsessive and compulsive symptoms and fear of intimacy. The results demonstrated that subjects who engaged in high-frequency voyeurism were more depressed than low-frequency voyeurs. Respondents in the high-frequency sexual deviant desire and behavior groups appeared to have more obsessive-compulsive symptoms in comparison to the low-frequency deviant sexual behavior and desire groups. Increased psychopathology was not associated with high-frequency non-deviant sexual behaviors and desires. This finding raised the question of whether labels such as sexual compulsion and addiction are merely pathologizing illegal sexual behavior.”

So back to my question about homosexuality which you still haven’t answered.

You said:

“Yes. Homosexuality was removed in 1973 for the DSM III. ”

Right! Here are your options Matthew.

a) Homosexuality literally changed from being a mental illness to a normal human identity over night, or –
b) The DSM had it wrong and was changed in accordance with our new understanding of homosexuality as being a normal part of being human and homosexuality was never a mental illness.

which is it Matthew?

Grace, just because you experience something makes it “proof”, does it? That doesn’t form the basis of science, does it? What you have ignored here is the undeniable fact that you still cannot point to one peer reviewed paper that actually has tested if pornography addiction exists and if it does how it is a burden on society. The original claim was that a group of men had erectile dysfunction because of an inability to achieve arousal through consensual sex with women and this was due to pornography and “hate speech” and this group of men had “intrusive thoughts of sexual violence”. But guess what? Nobody could come up with any evidence. No peer reviewed papers. Nothing.

So again, please tell me why after 50 years of commercial pornography, suddenly we are hearing about addictions? Addiction has got nothing to do with availability. Magazines have been available in newsagents since at least the 1970’s in Australia, longer in the US and other countries. Videos have been available in Australia since the 1980’s. Stop blaming the technology. So again I ask, can please, please have some evidence? Not hearsay or right wing Christian nonsense, but real studies.

Grace said “Similarly with homosexuality – once considered a mental illness. So was it a mental illness back then Matthew because the DSM said so?”

Yes. Homosexuality was removed in 1973 for the DSM III. I think what truly disturbs me here is that you accept vague statements or blatant misrepresentations of data from people with an axe to grind like Reisman, yet you ignore scientific manuals like the DSM which are used almost unanimously by those who are in the psychiatric field across the world for the last 60 years. You seem to be unable to understand that I would find it rather difficult to accept that someone like Reisman, who has a long history of bias, or those linked to right wing Christian groups, would be unacceptable to me a sources of proof. I’m assuming you believe that 9/11 was an inside job and that climate change is lie? You seem to swallow any old story instead of actually investigating the truth of dubious claims.

You ask “where is the proof?” People are entitled to speak of their own experiences. If I say I have been addicted to pornography, or am addicted then that is my experience, that is my proof. You have no right to tell me what I do and don’t feel or experience.

Regarding your comments about hiding evidence – there are easy ways to hide browsing history. You can even find instructions on the net, much easier than hiding mags and videos. Unless a person’s wife or partner is computer savvy enough to know that key logging technology exists, or suspects their partner is using porn, they are not going to use this.

Again you reference the DSM. Again I ask you, if the DSM is the source of all truth and wisdom, can you tell me whether depression or schitzophrenia only came to exist once it’s symptoms were listed in the DSM? Or did it exist before it was recognised?

Similarly with homosexuality – once considered a mental illness. So was it a mental illness back then Matthew because the DSM said so?

Because unlike some here, I have clearly referenced psychologists, the American Psychiatric Association, Michael Flood etc. Are these people and organisations biased? If people here are going to make fantastic claims, they better have the evidence to back it up. Using a Christian organisation as a reference isn’t an unbiased source (or even remotely scientific). Using Judith A. Reisman work as a source, who has had a documented history of bias, completely invalidates that source as “proof”.

Grace said “My point is – people are saying they are addicted to pornography, that it is a compulsion for them, that they can’t stop thinking about it, that it is having a negative impact on their lives”.

Sigh, OK, I’ll ask again; where is the proof? Please don’t point to Church groups or dodgy doctors like Reisman, they’ve both been discredited. If it is an addiction why haven’t the American Psychiatric Association included it for the DSM V? Every other addiction is in the DSM V, but oddly not pornography addiction. Why? People are certainly entitled to speak about their own experiences, but no credible psychologist seems to have documented this or thinks it’s a large enough problem to be included in the DSM V.

Grace said “that’s because of something called “the internet” which makes pornography so easy to access, with little or no evidence of it’s use. It can be easily hidden from partners or parents”

What rot. So you can’t hide magazines or videos? Addiction has nothing to do with ease of access. Don’t blame technology for social problems. “No evidence of its use”? I beg to differ. Go to your browsing history, or you can actually install tracking programs/key loggers without anyone knowing.

Regarding porn addiction, just because psychological societies have been unable to define it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Would you say that before depression was widely recognised, it didn’t exist? What about when homosexuality was considered a mental illness, was it actually a mental illness back then Matthew?

My point is – people are saying they are addicted to pornography, that it is a compulsion for them, that they can’t stop thinking about it, that it is having a negative impact on their lives. They are entitled to speak about their own experiences. You are claiming that this is all made up.

Regarding one of your other comments:

“One thing I don’t understand is we’ve had commercial pornography in the mainstream since the 1950’s, yet only in the last couple of years we have begun to hear about “addictions”.”

that’s because of something called “the internet” which makes pornography so easy to access, with little or no evidence of it’s use. It can be easily hidden from partners or parents and can be accessed as often as one has access to a computer.

Also about Serge Stoleru. How odd that I cannot find anything about his work about helping men with “erectile dysfunction brought about by an in-ability to achieve arousal through consensual sex with women” due to porn. No papers or anything. Methinks Dr. Judith Reisman’s one liner about his work is completely fabricated. The only piece of work I can find regarding the matter is one he did back in the 1990’s mapping sexual arousal in the male brain showing a group of men a number of short film . In it he found; “testosterone level rose very strongly during the sexually explicit film; it also increased slightly during the comedy sequence”. Methinks this research was the basis of Reisman’s one liner. If you can tell me the name of the paper that Stoleru did about erectile dysfunction and porn, please tell me the name of it.

Anyway Judith A. Reisman’s quote from Serge Stoleru is quite vague and meaningless. On Reisman’s work at looking at the images contained in many mainstream men’s magazines, American feminist Avedon Carol said “It was a scientific disaster, riddled with researcher bias and baseless assumptions. The American University (AU), where Reisman’s study had been academically based, actually refused to publish it when she released it, after their independent academic auditor reported on it. Dr Robert Figlio of the University of Pennsylvania told AU that, ‘The term child used in the aggregate sense in this report is so inclusive and general as to be meaningless.’ Figlio told the press, ‘I wondered what kind of mind would consider the love scene from Romeo and Juliet to be child porn’”. Reisman also claimed Kinsey was a paedophile which has absolutely no basis at all in truth.

I am very familiar with Michael Flood’s work. Merryn, did you know that Flood said “It’s well-documented that children and young people, who are exposed to sexual content, in advertising and other mainstream media and in porn, develop more liberal attitudes. They are more likely to think that other people are having sex. They are more likely to think that pre-marital and non-marital sex is OK, they are more likely to think that homosexuality is OK (I think that’s a good thing) and so on.” ['Net Nanny' Advocate Does Back Flip – New Matilda 5 June 2009], and in the same article “In case there is any confusion, Flood clarifies that he is pro-choice when it comes to porn. “In the report that Clive Hamilton and I authored in 2003,” he pointed out, “we said that adults should continue to have access to porn, in X-rated videos and DVDs and we wanted to transfer the system of classification to the net [so that] materials … would pass the Office of Film and Literature classifications standards — so not violence, not child porn.” And also that “we say that 16 and 17 year olds can have consenting sex, why can’t they look at pictures of other people having consenting sex?”.

Merryn, I’m going to need some real evidence that “more and more men come forward about the psychological illnesses and suffering they’ve incurred as a direct result of watching pornography” other than a link to book on Amazon. The only “evidence” I’ve found is material created by or selectively used by right wing Christian groups such XXXchurch.com. Hardly an unbiased source. One thing I don’t understand is we’ve had commercial pornography in the mainstream since the 1950’s, yet only in the last couple of years we have begun to hear about “addictions”. I call shenanigans big time here. If porn had some massive destructive force, we would have seen it by now. Yet as I look out my window I see that society hasn’t fallen apart. Hey, we have a lot of problems, but we’re mostly doing OK.

I think the problem here Merryn is you are putting all men and all pornography in the one basket. It’s not as simple as that. I believe Flood is right about one thing; sex education. I know mine was shoddy. Instead of force fitting porn into the role of all of society’s problems, how about we educate young men and women about sex properly (unlike what I got) and that men and women (surprise, surprise) want different things out of a relationship and think differently.

Here is something Australian focused for you! Academic Michael Flood is a new and very exiting scientists working with teenage boys and relationships and has delivered a number of really interesting reports. However you would need to pay for the copies. Here are some online articles detailing his work.
http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/45587-surprise-surprise-boys-who-watch-porn-have-rubbish-relationships
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6999874.ece

For a really interesting discussion from a growing number of men ‘coming out’ about the influence of pornography on their lives see this amazon page and associated links.
http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Off-Pornography-End-Masculinity/dp/089608776X/ref=pd_sim_b_14

I’m afraid your going to have to get used to this growing discourse Matthew as more and more men come forward about the psychological illnesses and suffering they’ve incurred as a direct result of watching pornography. I wonder why it’s so hard to fathom that we are shaped by out culture and by language. I really really feel for the men that are completely silenced by other men because they dare to speak out about their experiences and shatter the myth that pornography is harmless. But I feel worse for the boys who are left alone to navigate their way through degradation that this constructed as healthy sexuality within society. I feel terrible for the girls who are now left alone to content with these screwed up boys and their demanding monkey see monkey do sexualities. I think we are heading for a ‘real’ men’s movement here that hopefully will challenge the current dominance of predatory masculinities currently available as identity positions for young men and boys to take up.
As for the term Online misogyny: misogyny is a noun-check out this site if you need a definition and a how to guide about using nouns. You often find that people are fond of shifting and changing words, hence the fact that language is ever changing http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/misogyny