One fiction, one reality: Reflections around pornography addiction

In this topic, we will raise the question of the processes underlying addiction to pornography. We will base our analysis on the parallel between two stories, Brandon's and Kevin's. Brandon is the protagonist of Steeve McQueen's movie, Shame, whereas Kevin is a true person met in individual psychotherapy. In history of each, we detected childhood traumas (in particular sexual) on which they remained fixed, thus disturbing their psychological development. These, only suggested in the movie, illustrate the informal nature of some traumas, impossible to be described. The psychological fragility they cause leads to a split within the self, which appears in two opposite views co-existing within each individual: one who continued his psychic structuring; the other remaining enclosed in the trauma. However, under the constraint of repetition, splitting elements constantly threaten the self to resurface, resulting in the compulsive watching of pornographic pictures. This extreme consumption could be understood both as an attempt to give form to the trauma (supported on real images) and as a mode of discharge of this one. We hypothesize that addiction to pornography reflects an attempt to incorporate genital sexuality, revealing the failure of introjection of "genitality", hindered by the fixation to the trauma. Finally, we show that individual therapy can help the patient uncover the traumatic fragments of his personal history, and contribute to reinforce his narcissism whose integrity was threatened by split. More precisely, through sublimation, the therapy could allow the patient to quit addiction to pornography by transforming shame into exploration dedicated to self (re)construction. (C) 2015 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.