The Concept of Sex Addiction - Research Paper Example

? Pornography as Sex Addiction in the Military: From Scholarly and Popular Media Sources 31 January In “Escaping the Pain: Examining the Use of Sexually Compulsive Behavior to Avoid the Traumatic Memories of Combat,” Howard (2007) studied how military personnel use sexually compulsive behaviors to deal with combat trauma. His main hypothesis is that because of combat experiences, soldiers are more prone to developing sexually compulsive behaviors, which they use to forget the threat of, or actual, physical and psychological pain. He used the case study method to delve deeper into individual sexual problems. The case study is based on Jim, a soldier who served Marine combat duty in Iraq. He is twenty three years old and a Caucasian male. He is married and has a son. Howard (2007) is part of a team that provided a comprehensive treatment for Jim’s addiction and emotional problems. He collected qualitative data from Jim through counseling sessions. Findings showed that combat experience produced traumatic experiences for Jim, which resulted to his emotional and relationship problems. At the same time, Jim went through problems at home, which reinforced his need to escape his pain. Howard (2007) stressed that Jim self-medicated through the use of pornography, which became a sexually compulsive behavior. His sex addiction became a source of immediate temporary happiness that numbed him to pain. Howard (2007) also described the addiction cycle. Then, he recommended measures that can deal with the diverse components of addiction. He emphasized the importance of treating trauma, not just the addiction, through a systemic approach, which includes the wife/partner in the healing process. Howard (2007) concluded that sexually compulsive behavior can be an escape route for other traumatic experiences, such as rape and events of terrorism. He indicated the need for future studies that can further establish a stronger correlation between combat deployment as an independent variable and sexually compulsive behaviors as the dependent variable. In “Addicted to Online Porn,” Anderson (2010) reported about the pornography addiction of soldiers. This is not an actual study but a news report, so data collection includes interviews with soldiers, their wives, and counselors. The military sampling includes soldiers who are deployed or have come from deployment. Anderson (2010) explained how technology assisted the ease of developing pornography addiction. He interviewed Navy Lt. Michael Howard, a licensed therapist and chaplain, who has a specialty in sex addiction. Howard stated that twenty percent is a conservative estimation for soldiers who are addicted to porn. Anderson (2010) described the flourishing industry of Porn 2.0, as well as the practice of using social networking sites and “sexting” as means of porn addictions. Access to technology made porn addiction a convenient form of instant pleasure. Porn, as a kind of sex addiction, is similar to other forms of addiction, where it titillates the pleasure centers of the brain. Anderson (2010) talked to Robert Weiss, director of the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles, who described what happens to the brain while consuming pornography. Watching porn releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter that activates pleasure centers and blocks pain sources in the brain. Weiss added that masturbation increases dopamine levels and reinforces porn addiction. Porn addiction has numerous psychological and social effects. Anderson (2010) interviewed soldiers, who were fired because of storing child pornography images in their computers or accessing child porn websites. Soldiers also complained of how porn addiction affected their relationships and work performance. They admitted that porn became a way of dealing with their stress. The wives of soldiers addicted to porn expressed distress too because they felt betrayed when they learned of the porn addiction of their spouses. These interviews assert the individual, family, and organizational consequences of porn addiction. These articles have sex addiction in the military as their common theme, and they share the same goals of seeking to resolve it. Howard (2007) studied sexually compulsive behaviors, particularly pornography addiction, while Anderson (2010) described the range of pornography addiction problems in the military. They are both concerned of how these sexual problems are affecting the welfare of soldiers and their families, as well as the military sector in general. Howard (2007) is personally involved in treating sex addiction, while Anderson (2010) seems to aim to resolve it through reporting about this problem. The news from Anderson (2010) indicates that the more people know about it, the more that it will get the attention and resources it needs. These articles suggest that the military is not fully responding to sex addiction as an urgent psychological problem. Although these authors did not explicitly voice it out, the attitudes of the soldiers toward their addiction indicate that they are in a profession, where many of their superiors and doctors are not supportive of seeing sex addiction as a serious health problem. Military life is steeped with machismo attitudes, and these soldiers might feel that they are not “manning up,” if they admit that they have sex addiction problems. As a result, they hide their sex addiction from their loved ones and the army. The authors share some similarities in their research methods. They both interviewed soldiers and their spouses, as well as scholars and counselors. Soldiers are primary sources, who can tell them exactly what their sex addiction problems are and what its effects on them are. Scholars and counselors know the extent of the problem through the cases they are handling. The wives of afflicted soldiers are important data sources too because they offer information on how their husbands’ sex addiction affects their relationship and family experiences. They have a stake in helping their husbands recover too, not just for the latter’s sake, but for their families too. These articles are different because of their participation in their reports. Howard (2007) is a chaplain, and he has directly participated in counseling these soldiers and their spouses. He is not just a researcher, but a primary contributor to the treatment intervention. On the contrary, Anderson (2010) is a staff writer. He does not offer his expertise in any way to help resolve this military issue. Instead, he only collected evidence, which argued that sex addiction is a real and rising problem in the military, which means that it deserves attention and resolutions. Furthermore, the scholarly article is different because it openly tests and offers solutions, while the news article did not. Howard (2007) emphasized that bibliotherapy (reading books) and counseling are useful methods in resolving sex addiction of various forms, including pornography. Anderson (2010) concentrated on amassing information regarding the prevalence of porn addiction and its harmful effects at individual, family, army, and social levels. Consumers will benefit from reading each article because of the various and different information that can be attained from them. They will learn the literature that connects post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD) and addiction problems from Howard (2007). They will also access treatment methods and options, which can be relevant if they are in the same situations. They cannot get the same information from Anderson (2010), although they can read about more individual cases from the news article. The limitations of each article are based on their nature of collecting, analyzing and presenting data. Howard (2007) used scholarly sources to support his analysis and conclusions. This process provides him more credibility in the topic. However, the scholarly approach tends be long and too academic-sounding that its ideas and suggestions do not easily get mainstreamed. Anderson (2010) has the advantage of presenting information in a non-formal tone, where concepts of addiction and psychological problems can be expressed in layman terms. His writing style provides him a larger audience base than Howard (2007). Nevertheless, Anderson’s (2010) sources or way of reporting may be biased, since he did not discuss his conceptual scheme and references, the way that Howard (2007) did. These two sources help readers become aware of the differences between the scholarly and popular approaches of collecting, analyzing, and sharing information and ideas. The scholarly approach tends to be more reliable because it has a conceptual scheme that it uses, which is based on academic sources. It supports its opinions with scholarly research too. Howard (2007) is also careful in generating generalizations and conclusions, contrary to popular media that can exaggerate claims and turn isolated cases to facts. The popular media source has the downsides of not being a highly credible source of information because of its hidden biases, lack of discussion of analytical schemes, and not having the same scientific approach to data collection, analysis, and reporting as the scholarly approach. Nevertheless, popular media has a writing style that can attract and sustain the interest of the public, including the target readership, soldiers and their families. This student believes that average readers should read both articles because they cross-reference and contribute to each other. They can start reading the news article because it is an interesting springboard on the study of sex addiction, and the scholarly article will serve as additional and more credible reference. Thus, these articles enrich people’s understanding of sex addiction in the military. Public awareness can hopefully shape legislation and procedures regarding PSTD and how it should be properly identified and treated among affected military personnel. References Anderson, J.R. (2010, March 31). Addicted to online porn. ArmyTimes. Retrieved from http://www.armytimes.com/offduty/health/offduty_porn_033110/ Howard, M.D. (2007). Escaping the pain: Examining the use of sexually compulsive behavior to avoid the traumatic memories of combat. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, 14, 77–94. Read More