ABSTRACT
Compulsive sexuality seems to have become a more frequent phenomenon in clinical practices and in the general culture, reflected since the early 1990s in magazine and newspaper articles, the popular currency of the term “sex addiction,” and in targeted 12-step programs. Regarding “sex addiction” itself as often is the case, old wine has been appearing in new bottles. From the major currents can be distilled a psychoanalytic view of perversion from which an understanding of compulsive sexuality and addiction and their treatment emerges. One aspect of the working of the social at the secondary level arises with the question of whether sexual addiction appears differently in women than in men. Some preference among clinicians for “addiction” over “perversion” arises from discomfort about the long-standing abuse of the term “perversion” in defining homosexuality. This area is particularly interesting for how the social plays out in the clinical in various ways and at different levels.
