Understanding excessive online porn use, layer by layer
Psychoanalyst Todd Essig has embarked on a multi-episode story that has me hooked.
Writing a "clinical portrait of excessive online porn use", Essig draws from real life events in his therapy practice to construct the story of a compulsive porn collector. By all appearances, "Paul" is a successful and charismatic young man with an enviable lifestyle. Yet he struggles with relationships, and it soon transpires that internet porn features very prominently in his life.
What was so intriguing was that he also spent lots of time with his porn collection without masturbating; at times it seemed like a hobby.
It seemed “collecting” porn online was like Pac-Man, just challenging enough to keep him in that sweet spot between boredom and frustration. But unlike a video game, he scored sexy images instead of points. For him, collecting porn seemed to be a private, sexualized space in which he could simply play without expectation or fear of consequence.
So far, Essig has published the first 5 episodes of this 10-part narrative. But it already provides an illuminating insight into the therapeutic process, as Essig takes on the formidable task of understanding why internet porn is "so damn special" for this particular client.
Porn Game Over is Jason's self-help plan for quitting the habit. Click here for a fresh approach to internet pornography addiction...
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5 comments
Wow--thanks so much for
Wow--thanks so much for sharing this, Jason. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of it. For me, Essig really captures the confusion over why this person who *isn't* socially awkward around women and who dates attractive women is interested in going online and finding these photos of the type of women he could run into in real life. My understanding of why men would look at porn before this whole ordeal with my husband's porn addiction is that they wanted a perfect airbrushed fantasy or they had very opportunities to date. But to spend all the time fantasizing about something so ordinary and almost identical to real life has never made sense to me.
Yet another issue that
Yet another issue that doesn't seem to get mentioned very often here or else were. Is the difficulty for the individual & their problem given the on going nature of the internet, given the internet never rests & is always (or almost always on!) available. Meaning that porn is only a few mouse clicks away 24/7, meaning that the temptation of porn is made significantly harder (more difficult) to resist.
Meaning that to avoid porn requires either massive amounts of self control i.e. an act of will power or some form of content filtering. I find (found) content filtering to be the best option to counter the on going 24/7 nature of the siren pull of online porn. First of all I reached the personal conclusion that I'm always going to be very vulnerable to the magnetic attraction of porn, its always going to be one of my Achilles heels (weaknesses) & therefore I needed to put in place a firm boundary around porn as I couldn't put in place that boundary psychologically or emotionally speaking myself ( I seem to lack that specific boundary internally that's my weakness).
I use OpenDNS content filtering service to put that missing boundary in place, it filters or blocks certain categories of content that I have self selected such as pornography, nudity, bikini & lingerie, sexuality, adult themes (there are up to x30 categories which can be selected for or any combination of ). Now I feel much happier in myself & when using the internet knowing that I'm highly unlikely to end up on a porn site by accident or by design. This content filtering service helps me avoid porn and keeps me away from it, I feel much happier as a person knowing I have a boundary between myself & my weakness. Now I can feel more relaxed when using the internet & because somethings in life are better avoided than being indulged in.
Another point that comes to
Another point that comes to mind is that when it comes to using & viewing pornography & the associated problem behaviors this causes. Its extremely easy to take a simplistic approach & yet to misunderstand what precisely we are dealing with. Having a porn habit is NOT rational in fact the core problem with using porn is that its extremely irrational, sexual feelings & sexual responses to explicit images & explicit movies provoke irrational reactions. Having a chronic on going porn habit is I believe under pinned by unconscious irrational patterns that exists within the persons psyche.
And to this regard if my hypothesis is correct (my assumptions about using porn) then until a person has addressed his or her underlying irrational issues (patterns of dysfunctional behavior) then sadly the power of the irrational pattern/s will drive that person porn usage.
Its also my view that Porn use is mainly a symptom of some thing deeper which hasn't as yet been resolved, a deeper personal problem, a problem or experience which never got sorted out yet still lives on within our psyche. If these deeper problems are faced up to (confronted) and worked on over time then this has the effect of taking away the oxygen that fuels the fire, the fire being the porn habit as it were. Deal with the underlying issues then a person will naturally turn away from porn use, become un-interested in using porn to repress their difficult feelings. In other words deal with the bed rock problems & porn usage will naturally drop away by itself like a snake that sluff's off its old skin. It gets discarded, we also perhaps grow up, grow out of the need to turn to porn.
**But it does take a great deal of personal courage to face these deeper problems and it cannot be done alone without the help of a therapist or skilled counselor IMO.
The problem with a porn habit
The problem with a porn habit is its like trying to tame a dragon. A porn habit is an unconscious pattern, (unconscious meaning outside of your (our, mine) daily waking awareness) it does NOT behave in ways you expect, can predict, arises when you least expect and is triggered by certain events or situations or feelings. Even when you think you have concord the dragon it comes out of its cave to breath fire at you once again, to bite you on the bum if you become complacent. This is what makes dealing with the dragon so hard, meaning it is the unconscious self that needs to be addressed, the unconscious pattern/s need to be made conscious and only then does the dragon come onto view (comes out from its hiding place inside the darkness of its cave) only when the dragon comes into the daylight does its power become reduced & its ability to breath fire become quenched. Keeping the dragon in the darkness only fuels its powers, using porn only helps the dragon breath fire. A fire which ultimately only burns us.
I use mythical language to
I use mythical language to describe the nature of a porn problem because having a porn habit can feel like an almost mythical battle, a battle with yourself, a monumental struggle almost like those ancient pictures of George & the Dragon.
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