Psychotherapy with Young People Addicted to Internet Pornography

ABSTRACT

This paper describes common themes and developments in the treatment of three young people suffering with addiction to Internet Pornography. Central to their experience is an unconsciously motivated search, assisted by Internet algorithms, aimed at matching unconscious phantasy with a pornographic enactment. As pornography is abundant, free and highly diverse, patients are able to find what they unconsciously look for. The match between unconscious phantasy and its pornographic enactment becomes the substance of their addiction. The paper follows central theme emerging in long-term psychotherapy with these patients. It explores the links between infantile relational difficulties and trauma, lack of early containment, inability to tolerate and regulate extreme states of mind, and pornography addiction. The paper shows how treatment can slow down the addictive cycle to reveal what lies at its core. Exploring early trauma and deprivation allows for containment to replace the desperate need to avoid psychic pain. Arrested relational development can be resumed and patients can begin to enjoy sexual relationships, reducing the need for addictive pornographic use.

KEYWORDS:

• Pornography addiction
• young people
• sexual abuse
• internal gang
• Portman Clinic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ariel Nathanson

Ariel Nathanson, MA, M.Psych, is a Consultant Child, Adolescent and Adult Psychotherapist. He is a member of the Association of Child Psychotherapists (ACP), the Bowlby Centre and the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). Mr. Nathanson has been working for the National Health Service in the UK for more than 20 years, most of them at the Portman Clinic in London where he specializes in the assessment and treatment of children, adolescents and young adults who display perverse, delinquent and violent behaviors.