First of all, let’s dispense with the argument about whether Porn addiction actually exists. From a clinical perspective, porn addicts do not exhibit the same physiological symptoms as nicotine, alcohol and drug addicts. So in that sense, no, porn addiction does not exist.
However, from a behavioural perspective, the emotional dynamics of porn addiction are strikingly similar not only to clinically recognised addictions but to other cyclical, shame-based issues such as self-harm. Academics may quibble over abstract definitions; the misery of porn users is very real. The inability to stop porn binges can destroy relationships and lead to the loss of jobs and families.
There is also the not insignificant question of whether excessive exposure to porn causes men to objectify Women. Given that 97% of British boys aged 16-20 have viewed porn and 23% consider themselves addicted, the issue is a pressing one. In my opinion, viewing pornography does not cause the objectification of women: it’s too late. It’s already happened.
Writing in The Journey toward Complete Recovery, Michael Picucci, PhD, describes how society’s traditional antipathy to sex causes what he terms the ‘sexual-spiritual split’. This is a “deep psychic schism within almost everyone in our culture which prohibits enduring, loving relationships to form, which at the same time can remain sexually alive and growing.”
In short, the sexual-spiritual split is a psychic wound resulting from the incompatibility of our animal sexuality and our so-called civilised humanity. (This is the same fundamental psychological fissure that Freud wrote about in Civilization and its Discontents.) Picucci gives the origin of this split as “early religious and cultural training, which teaches that God, love, and family are good while sex is dirty, bad and perverse.” As described in the post A brief history of shame, this is because sex is traditionally regarded as transgressive.
By the time boys develop an interest in porn they have already internalised society’s unconscious sex-negative bias. When the natural adolescent desire for sexual exploration emerges, boys are unknowingly funnelled into seeing women in Madonna-or-whore terms: either as loving, lovable and implicitly non-sexual women like their mothers and sisters, or as depersonalised sex machines whose sole purpose is dispensing pleasure.
Our prevailing psychological paradigm does not teach boys to view women in complete terms: commanding respect, capable of giving and receiving love, yet also actively sexual. Given that pornography is the only form of visual sex education that young men currently have access to, improvement is unlikely anytime soon and porn consumption will continue to rise.
There are significant parallels between the various categories of porn and society’s traditional definitions of what constitutes illicit sex. Categories such as interracial sex, anal sex and group sex all represent violations of traditional sexual taboos and suggest a desire by the viewer to indulge in these taboo activities.
It is highly likely that people who are obsessed with a certain category of porn have rarely or ever engaged in the practice those images depict. This is because of their unconscious shame: in spite of their obsessive desire, moral prohibitions prevent them from enjoying that act in real life and instead keeps them hooked on images of it.
Tastes in pornography convey further information about the psychosexual damage endemic in our society. As the accompanying images reveal, a striking similarity exists between medieval images of the persecution of witches — when women were deliberately stripped then had their sexual parts tortured — and today’s so-called BDSM (bondage, domination and sadomasochism) images.
The same energies that impelled the witch-hunting mania of the late medieval period impels today’s practitioners of BDSM and those who are attracted to images of such practices: a repressed desire to punish or be punished for sexuality that contravenes socially accepted norms, or an unresolved fear, perhaps ancestral, of sexual persecution.
Shame keeps these distorted energies trapped in the unconscious where they are not properly understood. No one ever watches porn randomly. Its viewers are always attracted to images that resonate with something in their unconscious. When the functional basis of pornography is properly understood it provides a wealth of information that can be used with personal development practices to acknowledge, accept and release the shame-based programming that keeps people trapped in addiction.
