Anthony Weiner and Sex Addiction

So it turns out that indeed, the Congressman Anthony Weiner did send pornographic photos of himself to women online.

Does this make him addicted to sex?

We generally think of a sex addiction as related to illegal activity, or associated with dysfunction in a marriage or family, or perhaps to one's work, i.e., partners, children, customers, colleagues.  Others find the behavior objectionable, or it hurts someone.

How can pictures hurt?  By association, feeling sullied by them, or by exposure.  Not everyone who is sold in this way, as a photo or a video, ever asked for the modeling job.

Surely the constituents are chiming in, asking him to resign.  People want their representatives to focus upon their problems, not themselves and their sexual needs.  That's why we hire them-- to work hard, to get legislation, our agenda passed, whatever it is.  Maybe anti-porn laws, for example.

As a therapist I can name many ways that pornography upsets people, especially children.  The reputations of individuals who are exposed on line can never be the same.  The impact upon a child who sees pornography is tantamount to a snapshot memory, a picture in the mind that won't go away, might never go away, ever.  It is lifelong.  An unwanted picture, one that the child never asked to see.

We used to surround our children with beautiful things, and we encouraged them to be creative, to work hard in school, not deliberately look for the lurid.  Children who did that were shamed, punished.  Now it is so common, ubiquitous, that a search for porn is thought to be what kids do. 

But once, when a child found a stash of "dirty" magazines, it concerned parents.  A child shouldn't have to see these photos, shouldn't have to look at people in this way.  It is a short step from seeing a picture online or in a magazine to seeing everyone in this way, with eyes that wonder, 

"What does (s)he look like without those clothes?"

So it corrupts, Congressman Weiner.  What you did corrupts, ruins a perfectly clean disk for some kid who really never asked for it.  Just reading the story corrupts our children.  Sorry, that's how a therapist sees it.

Sure, get help.  And step down.