ABSTRACT
The sex addict did not exist before the late twentieth century. Now the concept is a cultural commonplace. Sex addiction's success as a purported malady lay with its medicalisation, both as a self-help movement in terms of self-diagnosis and as a rapidly growing industry of therapists on hand to deal with the new disease. Sociologists and cultural historians of medicine and psychiatry have outlined the ingredients for the expansion of a syndrome, which, with modifications here and there, can be applied to the development of the sex addict. First, the illness was named. Then it needed the drugs and the pharmaceutical companies to market both the ailment and its supposed cure. Then there was the role of patient advocacy and self-help groups. Then it required therapists of various sorts. The sex addict is situated in a culture in which sex has become central to everyday discourse and representation.
