For quite some time religious communities have been sounding the alarm against "pornography addiction", while most of the mental health communities have largely stated it is not really a problem. However, it seems that more mainstream mental health professionals are starting to see pornography addiction as a problem. For instance, recently I discovered that world renowned marriage therapy scholar, John Gottman, just barely published a new book. The title of his new book, published September of this year is "What makes love last? How to build trust and avoid betrayal". This book includes a whole chapter on how pornography abuse and addiction can impact couple relationships. Even though I have only begun reading the book (I will provide a more in depth review later on) I found the title of chapter 4, "Men, Porn, and Sex Drives", interesting enough to skip to and read first. After reading through this chapter, I was pleased to find that Dr. Gottman explains how pornography use in relationships causes a number of problems. He specifically states that the chemicals released during a couples intimate encounters provide an attachment to the partner. If these chemicals are released during pornography use, that attachment is transferred from the partner to an impersonal image, leading to less sexual interest in the partner. There is some other very good information in the rest of the chapter related to porn use and porn addiction, but I don't want to spoil the whole chapter for you. So far the book is great, and I highly recommend it.
What are your thoughts about this new stance on pornography addiction?
