In a Dear Prudence column today I found a link to an article about Dr. Kakfa at McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA, who has the ability to "cure" sex addicts.
Articles about fetishes and psychology always interest me because I enjoy seeing the back-end programming of our brains, particularly when it comes to what are considered culturally unnatural topics, like fetishes or alternate relationships. The article was very interesting, but by the time I got to the end of it, I felt uncomfortable.
It was the cured cases that did it. While these men were suffering from sexual addiction that made their every day life nearly impossible to live, it was the interviews with them describing their life after they were cured that bothered me, particularly in the case of the former transvestite. He talks about no longer desiring to wear women's clothing, how he's packed away all his feminine clothing and has regular vanilla sex with his wife (yes, they actually use the term "vanilla"). To me, it felt like the description of those programs that claim to cure homosexuality.
What is normal? Clearly, these men were suffering from their addictions, but is it right to take away any and every vestige of what our culture deems sexually abnormal? They're not turned on by furniture of having sex with underage prostitutes anymore, but do we have to keep going the other direction? The men are given SSRIs (anti-depressants like Prozac--though Celexa seems to be popular with Dr. Kafka) to calm their urges.The former transvestite can track his fetish back to the days of watching his grandmother sew women's garments, but does that mean he's abnormal?
I'm worried about where we draw the line. My mind is filled with homosexuality cures and the origin of graham crackers and while I'm just an amateur armchair psychologist, something doesn't seem right to me. I guess I should have known from the first page, where Dr. Kafka states that more than three orgasms per week for a man is treading into the sexual addiction territory.
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