Image credit: Photo by Arty Smokes on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

As someone who lives with the reality of sexually compulsive behavior every day, I have to admit, articles like last month's Forbes magazine piece on whether or not sex addiction exists make me roll my eyes. It's always the same thing, "The idea of being addicted to sex is ... quite controversial." Which always misses the same point: the "controversy" (as I've said before) is over nothing more than semantics.

Yep, that big sex addiction controversy you hear about all the time. Contrary to what you've been led to believe, it's not over whether or not it's possible to have compulsions or self-destructive behavior around sex, but simply over whether or not those behaviors should be labeled with the word "addiction" instead of something like "obsessive compulsive disorder" or "impulse control disorder."

Semantics are boring. Who wants to argue semantics? But does this condition even exist?! Now that's catchy! That will sell magazines! So journalists slant the story in a way that implies that because some experts hesitate to call sexually compulsive behavior 'addiction,' there is no such thing as unhealthy or uncontrollable or self-destructive sexual behavior at all. And in doing so, they do the neurological equivalent of writing an article about coronary artery disease that implies that because some experts hesitate to call coronary artery disease 'heart disease,' there is no such thing as unhealthy arteries at all.

Consider the way this particular article frames one study about the brain science of sexual addiction, in which researchers compared people diagnosed with a particular subset of sex addicted behavior with others who were diagnosed with impulse-control disorders or attention deficit disorder, as well as a control group without any disorders:

"The subjects were asked to look at a flashing letter on a screen, and quickly press a button if they saw any letter other than 'X.' Patients who have impulse disorders usually press the button more often; this held true for both the patients who had traditional problems as well as the sexually compulsive people.

"Things changed, however, when the researchers had their subjects do this task inside an MRI machine. People with impulse disorders had reduced activity in the bottom front of the brain (as seen in previous experiments), but the people with sexual disorders had reduced activity at the top front of the brain, indicating that something different was going on. "

Look at the first paragraph very carefully. The study shows that patients who act in sexually compulsive ways — like those with ADD and other impulse disorders — behave differently in a scientifically measurable way than "normal" people who do not have impulse disorders. That's extraordinary. But that's not the information most people come away from the article with.

I could easily reframe the same study, without changing any of the actual data or facts to something more along the lines of what one would expect to read in an article about some less (pop psychologically) "controversial" diagnoses like bipolar disorder:

"The subjects were asked to look at a flashing letter on a screen, and quickly press a button if they saw any letter other than 'X.' As one might expect, patients who have impulse disorders as well as those exhibiting sexually compulsive behavior had similar problems regulating their behavior, and both groups tended to press the button more often than those in the control group.

"However, when the researchers had their subjects do this task inside an MRI machine, they found that, while the behavioral symptoms exhibited in the previous experiment were the same, the neurological underpinnings of the disorders differed. People with impulse disorders had reduced activity in the bottom front of the brain (as seen in previous experiments), but the people with sexual disorders had reduced activity at the top front of the brain. More research is needed to determine the role of the area at the top of the brain and the ways in which reduced activity in that area interferes with behavior regulation."

Same story. Different slant. So, do you want to know where the real controversy is? Not among psychologists. Not among researchers. And certainly not among those struggling with sexually compulsive behavior or its effects. The controversy is purely among journalists and magazine editors, looking to make a buck.