"Psychologists say it's a real disorder; others say compulsion doesn't indicate dependence.
The women spend hours online looking at pornography or looking for sex.
Some fantasize about being sexual in public. Others cruise bars looking for anonymous encounters with strangers. Tolerance builds and things get boring, so the women have to engage in ever-riskier or more frequent behaviour to get the same "hit," or even just to feel normal.
Little is known about the prevalence of sexual addiction in women, but psychologists say the phenomenon is real and only now getting the attention given men with sexual addiction.
"We're seeing women get-ting into pornography in a way we've never seen before," says psychologist and sex-addiction research pioneer Dr. Pat-rick Carnes, executive director of the Gentle Path program at Pine Grove Behavioural Center in Hattiesburg, Miss. - the clinic where Tiger Woods reportedly sought treatment.
"Women are engaging in affairs, they're engaging in sado-masochistic behaviour," Carnes said. "This thing is just morphing right in front of us. - We are seeing the biggest change in human sexuality maybe in the history of our species."
Other observers are wary of the sudden flurry of attention to sex addiction. When do obsessions about sex cross the line into a pathological brain disorder, they ask - and who should get to establish norms for accepted amounts of sexual "activity" or desire?
According to Carnes, sexual addiction is estimated to afflict as many as three to six per cent of the population and is defined as intense, sexually arousing fantasies, urges and behaviours that the person cannot control or stop, regardless of the consequences.
Profound shame keeps women from seeking help in the same proportion as men, Penny Lawson says - shame, as well as derogatory and loaded words such as "promiscuous" and "slut" that society attaches to these kinds of behaviours in women.
As a result, "women aren't inclined to come forward and say, 'I need help,'" says Lawson, creator of Canada's first residential treatment program for sexual addiction at Bellwood Health Services in Toronto.
The Internet has created once unimaginable access to sexuality, anonymity and relation-ships, Lawson says - or at least to the illusion of relationships, she says. ..."
The women spend hours online looking at pornography or looking for sex.
Some fantasize about being sexual in public. Others cruise bars looking for anonymous encounters with strangers. Tolerance builds and things get boring, so the women have to engage in ever-riskier or more frequent behaviour to get the same "hit," or even just to feel normal.
Little is known about the prevalence of sexual addiction in women, but psychologists say the phenomenon is real and only now getting the attention given men with sexual addiction.
"We're seeing women get-ting into pornography in a way we've never seen before," says psychologist and sex-addiction research pioneer Dr. Pat-rick Carnes, executive director of the Gentle Path program at Pine Grove Behavioural Center in Hattiesburg, Miss. - the clinic where Tiger Woods reportedly sought treatment.
"Women are engaging in affairs, they're engaging in sado-masochistic behaviour," Carnes said. "This thing is just morphing right in front of us. - We are seeing the biggest change in human sexuality maybe in the history of our species."
Other observers are wary of the sudden flurry of attention to sex addiction. When do obsessions about sex cross the line into a pathological brain disorder, they ask - and who should get to establish norms for accepted amounts of sexual "activity" or desire?
According to Carnes, sexual addiction is estimated to afflict as many as three to six per cent of the population and is defined as intense, sexually arousing fantasies, urges and behaviours that the person cannot control or stop, regardless of the consequences.
Profound shame keeps women from seeking help in the same proportion as men, Penny Lawson says - shame, as well as derogatory and loaded words such as "promiscuous" and "slut" that society attaches to these kinds of behaviours in women.
As a result, "women aren't inclined to come forward and say, 'I need help,'" says Lawson, creator of Canada's first residential treatment program for sexual addiction at Bellwood Health Services in Toronto.
The Internet has created once unimaginable access to sexuality, anonymity and relation-ships, Lawson says - or at least to the illusion of relationships, she says. ..."
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