My colleague, Dr. Crocker, and I have given numerous presentations on the subject of sexual compulsivity and sex addiction. Whether sex addiction is a real disorder is a hotly debated topic, and just recently an effort to include sex addiction (hypersexual disorder) in the DSM 5 was rejected. I will save more complex thoughts on this topic for another post, but suffice it to say, many of the folks who seek treatment are not really sexually compulsive, they are just shamed up or have other motives for self-defining themselves as addicts. Yes, others really are compulsive and I have expertise in helping them out.

But here’s what really got me excited about writing a post– Dr. Crocker just completed a study about sexually compulsive folks that I feel is one of the most groundbreaking research projects ever in this area and once published will surely establish him in psychology as a brilliant pioneer. So let me explain what this study is all about, how it was put together, and what it uncovered.

Dr. Crocker recruited a group of over 70 compulsive guys and administered a battery of psychological tests to gauge levels of compulsivity, attachment style and childhood trauma. The tests were self-administered online and then the results were calculated with advanced statistical programs.

The results were stunning. The study found a high degree of statistical correlation between sexual compulsivity and avoidant attachment style. To understand what that means, it is important for me to provide a brief description of what attachment theory is all about. Pioneered by John Bowlby, the field of attachment studies the relationship between children and caregivers. Using an observational protocol called the Strange Situation, researchers would observe the response of one-year old children to their caregiver coming in and out of a room and at times, being replaced by a stranger in the room. Researchers found three main attachment styles– anxious/ambivalent, avoidant, and the healthy one, secure. Anxious/ambivalent children cried profusely when the caregiver left the room and couldn’t be calmed when the caregiver returned, while the avoidant child just acted unfazed (although heart rate and blood pressure monitors showed that the child was under extreme duress). Anxious/ambivalent attachment has been linked to inconsistent caregiving while avoidant attachment to neglect.

So what does all this mean? Basically the study has shown very strong evidence that what people are calling sex addiction is actually a more complicated response to relational and emotional anxiety. Basically, the “sex addiction” is an elaborate pattern of sexual behaviors aimed at regulating emotion states and anxiety. The specific type of attachment that this study focused on has significant meaning for clinical and treatment purposes, but for the moment, we now for one of the very first times have concrete evidence that all of this out of control behavior that is labeled as an addiction has more of an emotional, relational and trauma origin than anything resembling a chemical dependency.

Here’s a link to more info about this groundbreaking study.