Sexual addiction, sexual compulsivity, sexual impulsivity, or what? Toward a theoretical model

Journal of Sex Research,  August, 2004  by John Bancroft,  Zoran Vukadinovic

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

An important qualification of these patterns is the possibility that in some individuals, depression can be associated with anxiety, allowing for a blending of Patterns 1 and 3.

A key and as yet unanswered question is why some individuals have the capacity for these atypical and potentially problematic interactions between mood and sexuality. In our study of heterosexual men, we found a negative correlation between MSQ score and age, indicating that such paradoxical patterns are more common in younger men and presumably change for most individuals as they get older. We did not find the association with age in our gay men. This may be because our gay sample covered a different age range or because gay men typically have a different developmental history regarding the relationship between mood and sexuality. Nevertheless, the potential negative association with age begs the question of when such an association becomes established. One obvious hypothesis, which remains to be adequately tested, is that the paradoxical mood-sexuality relationship is developed during childhood or early adolescence as a consequence of early experiences which combine sexual response with negative mood, such as child sexual abuse (CSA) or induced guilt about masturbation. We found no support for this in the current study; those with a history of child abuse did not differ in their MSQ scores from those without such histories. But because this sample was very small and we performed only limited assessment of the childhood factors, these results cannot be regarded as definitive. A better test of this hypothesis would be to identify relatively large samples with and without the trait of increased sexuality in negative mood states and compare them on various aspects of their developmental history, including CSA. Coleman (1986) has postulated that the predisposition to use substances or behaviors to alleviate emotional pain may reflect an "intimacy dysfunction" which could result from child sexual abuse or neglect. It would not be surprising if an early established pattern of increased sexual arousal and interest in association with negative mood could become a barrier to the normal incorporation of one's sexuality into close, intimate sexual relationships. In our study of sexual risk taking in heterosexual men (Bancroft et al., 2004), we found that men in monogamous relationships had lower MSQ scores.

Clearly, assessment of the relationship between mood and sexuality should be carded out in future studies of out of control sexual behavior. Our MSQ has the advantage of being brief, with, by now, a substantial amount of normative data from both men and women. However, this is a very simple trait measure which does not pick up the complexities of the relationship between depression and sexuality, nor the potential admixture of depression and anxiety. We are in the process of developing a more sophisticated instrument for these purposes. But in addition, further research should not rely only on cross-sectional studies such as that reported here but should also use prospective methodology, such as daily diaries.