The truth was out there recently, when David Duchovny entered rehab for sex addiction.
What exactly is that, and how is it treated?
Related posts:
- Sex addiction
- Treating chronic pain with narcotics and avoiding the risk of addiction
- Making a mockery of rehab
- Pain management and addiction
- Dr. House and Vicodin addiction
- Should internet addiction be a mental disorder?
- Horrific addiction to cosmetic surgery
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“NEWSWEEK: The term “sex addiction” isn’t universally accepted among psychologists, is it?” …
“Jill Bley:” … “Those of us who do the clinical work, we don’t care what you call it. We look at the behavior. I may tell someone they have an obsessive-compulsive sexual need. The only time the label makes a difference is if you go to court or justify something with an insurance company—then you call it obsessive-compulsive behavior.”
Ms. Bley speaks volumes when she states (in response to Newsweek’s question):
“Those of us who do the clinical work, we don’t care what you call it.” … “We look at the behavior.”
Before the public outcry begins to place such endogenous hormones and neurotransmitters as vasopressin, oxytocin, opioid peptides, and endorphins under The Controlled Substances Act – let us think for a moment about what Ms. Bley is actually saying here …
The concept of “Obsessive Compulsions” are a (subjectively) *psychiatric* declaration generated for strategic social purposes of deeming another person incapable of organizing their priorities to the satisfaction of another person (often, we find a person who holds academic laurels). While endogenous chemical substances may be found that, when administered to “patients”, appear to attenuate such amorphously identified behaviors – such a phenomenon does not (in itself) serve to validate the legitimacy of a “diagnosis”.
Bear in mind that we are not even talking about physiological diseases in such cases – we are talking about fashionable psychiatric declarations of the day relating to (amorphous, and ever changing) concepts of the allowable gamut of human behaviors which constitutes the objectively undefinable concepts of “mental hygiene” within a society in some particular place and time.
While we might (for the most part) agree that murder in a civil society (providing we do not label such as a “just war”) represents a lack of “mental hygiene”, reasonable individuals may beg to differ where it comes to peaceful and consentual adult behaviors involving “free will”.
Yet there appears no dearth of customers yearning to sacrifice their own “free will” to “life-coaches” to achieve a modern equivalent of “sainthood”, that is – “blameless victim-hood”. Similarly, there certainly is no dearth of “doctors of the universe” more than willing to “take on more patients” (for a healthy monetary price, and at cost of that once-prized human characteristic known as “free will”).
“Diagnoses are not diseases”, and psychology/psychiatry (despite all the technological bells and whistles with which modern neuroscientists are claiming to now have mounted the “sublime” in a reductionistic free-for-all of weighty assertions) is – to date – *not* based upon objective findings of a physiological nature. Plain and simple.
Nevertheless, this does not stop Ms. Bley from the further telling assertion that:
“The only time the label makes a difference is if you go to court or justify something with an insurance company.”
Thus, Ms. Bley asserts that the only time that it (even) would become necessary to identify a concept with an objective *name* such as “obsessive-complusive-disorder” (within the priesthood of “life-coaches” that she inhabits, anyway ) is when money is involved.
Such concepts as “evidence-based” (we surmise), only becomes relevant when someone is forking out money for her services – and further, demands that a label be ascribed. Man, these people and their phony “arts” are truly troubling and scary. Once the Courts have “validated” such amorphous and unaccountable rot, they (the “professionals”) are “on their merry way” – all the way to the bank …
“How can such paternalism on the part of the rulers lead to anything but infantilism on the part of the ruled?”
-Thomas Szasz, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, SUNY
Those who would trust in (as well as sacrifice their free will to) such charlatans deserve everything that they get. I thought that The Food and Drug Act of 1903 was supposed to eliminate “quackery”. Don’t bet on it. Bereft of self-directed inspirations, (some) people have sunk to resort to “priesthoods of pontificatious professionals” in order to purchase indulgences to absolve them of their purported sins. “There’s a sucker born every second.”
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.”
-George Orwell
“Wickedness runs quicker than death.”
-Socrates
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A CHILLING TALE, INDEED
Not long after submitting my post directly above, there was a crisp patter of knocks at my door.
Two Inquisitors stood stoically in my doorway, busily displaying their official credentials as members of the Thought Police serving the Priesthood of Moral Science.
“This is an intervention …”, they tersely announced.
“We have been monitoring your cerebral positron emissions via NSA nano-cookies implanted by the Theraputic State as a direct result of your recent chronic self-stimulation activity while uploading certain unfashionable commentary to certain elite sanctuaries of the Priesthood of Moral Science.” …
… “We find suspicious and unacceptable angles of chronically misaligned electron spin within several pleasure pathways within your cranium constituting a state of hyper-sensitized afferent nueronal pathways between your VTA and NA involving Dopamine Subtype II receptors far in excess of allowable limits, and with a frequency of repetition that clearly indicates ‘feelings of well-being’ associated with the questioning of orthodoxy.”.
One of the agents, bristling with disgust and despite, added, “We (even) find the states to which your mind travels to possess a certain … almost … sexual … character …”. The other agent briefly physically shivered with sanctimonious fury, as if exorcising himself of such impure sensibilities then and there, before god and everybody. “Come with us, sockpuppet”, he snarled, as they both donned latex gloves and whipped out a thick pile of papers. “Your days of self-misuse are over …”.
Duly humbled, I read the State’s lengthy complaint with both wonder and dread. It read:
“You are hereby served with a summons issued by the Right Honorable Secret Tribunal of Magistrates as requested by Grand Jury of Secrecy at an undisclosed place at an undisclosed time. The charge are dual:
[1] Failure to Comply with THE COMPULSORY OBSESSIONS of assuming a sanctimonious stance from which the satisfactory Professional will actively engender, support and defer to the practice of permanent moral supervision of any citizen deemed Untouchable by any active operative of the Theraputic State; and
[2] OBSESSIVE COMPULSIONS evidenced by a continued Failure to Comply with The Compulsory Obsessions cited under Sub-section [1] cited directly above in this Summons.
You may choose to forego appearing at the time, date, and place indicated below in this Summons, and receive a suspended sentence with eternal probation, based on life-longer future compliance with the directives of the Theraputic State, and including the mandatory administration of sublingual communion biscuits containing known antagonistic N-constituent molecular radicals effectuating the negation of all secondary and tertiary agonistic messenger systems, rendering your modified brain chemistry incapable of producing heresy or other blasphemes upon the Theraputic State for the duration of your days, free from all agony, devoid of all agonism.”
POSTSCRIPT: Well, as you can imagine, I “copped a plea”, and now, thoroughly convinced of the previous errors in my ways, I can see now just how “unwell” my unfettered mind and untamed tongue had been. Duly contrite, I now spend my time lecturing of the dangers of individual thought and questioning orthodoxy to the Great Unwashed, intervening uninvited into their personal affairs with a zeal and dedication that makes my masters proud.
I have so many more golf buddies at the Club these days – and we roll up and smoke *money* instead of dope! I am so much happier now that I have seen the light, and have committed my life to the ritual trivialization, demonization, and righteous persecution of any/all “thought-criminals” in service of the greater good. I just *love* my new life now!
We’re goose-stepping to the cafeteria these days, as we join our voices in unison, joyfully singing, ” … don’t be dumb, be a smarty, come and join the Sanctimonious Party!”. Long live the Homeland!
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SUPREME UNCTION JUNCTION
“The utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.”
-Alfred North Whitehead
“When men are ruled by fear, they strive to prevent the very changes that will abate it.”
-Alan Paton
“The price of eternal vigilance is indifference.”
-Marshall McLuhan
“A title is the acknowledgement of others that one has been the winner of a particular game. Titles are public. They are for others to notice.” … “It is a principal function of society to validate titles and to assure their perpetual recognition.” … “Titles … point backwards in time. They have their origin in an unrepeatable past. Titles are theatrical. Each title has a specified ceremonial form of address and behavior.” … “The mode and content of the address and the manner of behavior are recognitions of the areas in which titled persons are no longer in competition.” … “The titled are powerful. Those around them are expected to yield, to withdraw their opposition, and to conform to their will – in the arena in which the title was won.” … “One can be powerful only through the possession of an acknowledged title – that is, only by the deference of others.” … “Power is contradictory and theatrical.” … “society is a species of culture that persists in contradicting itself, a freely organized attempt to conceal the freedom of the organizers and the organized, an attempt to forget that we have willfully forgotten our decision to enter this or that contest and to continue in it.”
-James Carse
“Nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know.”
- Montaigne
We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them.”
- Goethe
“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatsoever that it is not utterly absurd.”
- Bertrand Russell
“We call first truths those we discover after all the others.”
- Albert Camus
Existence is the great humbler.
-Doctor Rocktor
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