If It Isn’t Sex Addiction, What Is It? And How Do You Treat It?

This is a follow up to the Lunch & Learn webinar

2 CE Credit Live Interactive Webinar Friday, April 28^th, 2023
10 am-12 pm Pacific / 1 pm-3 pm Eastern
Presenter: Marty Klein, PhD
Fee: $49

For those who register but are unable to attend, CE credits (though not Live) will be available by viewing the recording and completing the post-test and evaluation. Distance Learning Board Approvals

Tokens may not be used with webinars.

2 CE credit hours. This webinar satisfies requirements for live CE credits for all professions except psychologists licensed outside of California.

NOTE TO PSYCHOLOGISTS: For psychologists licensed in California, this webinar satisfies requirements for live, interactive Continuing Education. For psychologists not licensed in CA, due to APA policies, Continuing Education certificates will be designated as home study.

The sex addiction movement addresses fundamental human (and therefore clinical) issues: lust, desire, guilt, fantasy, decision-making, and the relationship of love and sex. The answers generated by this model, however, have important limitations—and for many people, they are disastrous, contradicting the best practices of psychotherapy and couples counseling.

We will examine how patients’ impulsive or seemingly out-of-control sexual behavior may really involve:

• medicating their depression, anxiety or anhedonia
• acting out unconscious hostility
• an arousal disorder
• denial of a disturbing sexual preference or orientation
• fear of getting too close to a primary partner
• a recurring sexual dysfunction with a primary partner
• inadequate attraction to, or unspoken resentment toward, a primary partner
• attempting to remain in a low-sex or no-sex relationship
• unresolved conflict with religious values

Why does it matter what we call (supposedly) out-of-control sexual behavior? Why are the overwhelming majority of patients diagnosed as sex addicts men—and what does that mean?

Most importantly, how can we best diagnose and treat patients with problematic sexual decision-making?

We’ll also look at the new narrative of porn addiction, and how it’s used to claim that porn is now a public health problem (rather than an old-fashioned immorality problem).

• Do neuroscience and social psychology actually support this diagnosis?
• What are our options when a patient is convinced he’s a porn addict—or begs to be diagnosed (and treated) as one to appease his partner?
• How do we evaluate patients who seem to be using porn self-destructively?
• How can we treat these patients most effectively?

 Target audience: This course is appropriate for all mental health professionals

Content level: Intermediate