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Sexual dependence is truth or fiction?

 
, medical expert
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
 
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23 July 2013, 09:00

In the modern world, more and more addictions arise. Along with harmful habits like alcoholism and drug addiction, they appear onomania (better known as shopaholism), Internet addiction and even sexual addiction.

Dependence on sex is called sex addiction. This concept is applicable to a person who is unable to control intimate desires, and aspiring to receive physical satisfaction as many times as possible. It is about a condition that equates to a disease that destroys the career and personal life of an individual.

Each dependence is associated with changes in the patient's brain, which works in a special way. Based on the analysis of the brain activity of a person with pronounced abnormalities, the physician determines the presence of one or another dependence.

Psychologists at the University of California (USA, Los Angeles) tested thirty-nine men and nineteen women in the age range of 18-39 years. Initially, scientists determined the characteristics of the sexual behavior of the experimental subjects, having received answers to a number of questions. The experiment itself consisted in fixing the brain data on the electroencephalogram (EEG), resulting from the reaction to the photographs viewed. Images were selected in such a way that they excite a variety of sensations - from negative to positive. Photos covered various areas of human life: family dinner, skiing, people with disabilities, as well as pictures of erotic content.

Researchers were interested in brain impulses three hundred milliseconds after the demonstration of the image. The reaction of the brain at this moment allows the most accurate determination of the presence or absence of dependence. Similar technology was used earlier for studying other types of addiction, so she was given preference for the detection of sexual addiction.

Psychologists have identified participants in psychological characteristics suitable in the ranks of sex-dependent, but at the same time to fix any features in brain activity scientists failed.

According to the experiment, it was established that dependence on sex is only a state of increased libido. Strong sexual attraction is not included in the list of diseases, it is not connected with changes in the human brain and lends itself to conscious control.

Man's obsession with sex, as well as complaints of a terrible dependence, is nothing more than a way to justify one's actions or to awaken the interest of others in this way. Neurochemistry of the brain, the more incorrectly formed inter-neural connections have nothing to do with the problems of communication, the impossibility of realizing in one's own family, the destruction of a career and marriage do not have. Rather, it is about moral principles, motivation, ways of self-expression of an individual.

The term of sexual dependence has many supporters, placing unrestrained sexual attraction in the category of mental abnormalities. Dependence on sex - truth or fiction? Everyone decides for himself.

trusted-source[1], [2], [3], [4],

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