Category Archives: Uncategorized

September 14, 2025 · 5:58 am

Two attorneys chat about a child abuse law

Imagine a lead-up to the case of Harris, as in Kamala, representing the state of California, v. Mathews, Alvarez, and Owen: a case at least five years in the making; a case delayed multiple times because witnesses weren’t available at short notice, because one of the attorneys for either side became ill; because the judge in the case decided to go on vacation–who knows? And if you weren’t there for the projected week-long trial that became a day-and-a-half trial and ended abruptly, you won’t recognize so readily the elements outlined in this speculative dialogue. You might not know that a ten year old law that mandated changes to child abuse reporting law based on now 45 year old legislation had gotten bounced around between courts since 2019–officially remanded by the California Supreme court in 2020 with the decree that the state must demonstrate, via a trial, that the 2015 amendment to the 1980 Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act (CANRA) advances the cause of that earlier legislation. So, conjure two principals from the state attorney general’s office (I’ll call them A and B), chatting on the eve of the trial with one of them fretting yet plotting over what may happen:

A: So, a person does something that harms children, indirectly. They look at child porn. I know. I’m supposed to call it CSAM, child sexual abuse material. Whatever. But it does harm them directly, someone says–one of our witnesses: “It’s not a victimless crime”

B: Well, it isn’t

A: Question is, is that relevant? I can hear the other side, possibly the judge: “Oh, well then we must identify, locate, and then protect the victimized child, following those questions that appear on suspected child abuse report forms. And if this change to the law will achieve that, then okay”. Well, the thing is it won’t as far as we know, but it will stop the subject of the report from continuing the behavior.

B: And presumably deter however many others there are doing this behavior

A: No, that’s been increasing in a big way actually, not decreasing–what both our side and theirs call an “explosion” of CSAM on the internet.

B: So why’s that happening, the explosion?

A: It’s the technology…ya know, the growth of the internet, the sophisticated ways in which images can be stored and hidden

B: The internet? Not people’s desire to do the behavior, look at child porn?

A: Yes, but the technology has made it easier to find the images; meanwhile, the number of images are incredible so it’s hard to track them all. People who weren’t previously inclined to do this kind of thing can now. Or, the same number of people are doing it, roughly, but are able to do it more, gather ever more images, because of the technology. We’re not sure.

B: You mean despite us having this now ten year old reporting law to deter people. So, why have the law?

A: Well, the idea was that having the law, plus the amendment, would help us capture child porn users, not just those who produce, sell, or distribute–that was what the law previously said. But capturing porn users was never the purpose of the law–protecting children is–so we have to spin it that way somehow

B: I see. The plaintiffs will argue that there are more commonplace and more effective ways to capture child porn users, like acting on tips from the public, or by going through google, for example

A: Yes, and states do get thousands of tips per year from the public about child porn users, countless more than we get from psychotherapists reporting on their patients. Not sure about compelling google to violate privacy of their users, getting them to report, and of course they’d have tons more money to fight us in court than three therapists from California plus a pro bono lawyer.

B: Okay, well if we do capture them, the child porn users–let’s say we get better at that, or that more therapists report their patients to us–then what? Remind me, are we talking misdemeanors or felonies?

A: Depends on how much child porn they’ve been viewing or downloading. If it’s not so bad we can send ’em back to therapy, only we–meaning the state–would be in charge of the therapy at that point. Basically, we’d presume they’d lie about their behavior so we’d regularly use polygraphs to verify their disclosures.

B: So what if they tell the truth about more use of child porn?

A: Well, then they’d be in violation, which would lead to a custodial sentence probably. Or, if they lie about child abuse and they fail a polygraph, then the same result would follow

B: And if they’re not continuing to use child porn and they pass a polygraph, then what do they talk about in therapy?

A: I don’t know. Whatever else they talk about in therapy. They get reminded to not use child porn, I guess. Our expert witnesses don’t say much about that.

B: And what about the plaintiff witnesses. What might they say?

A: Well, they’ve just got the one, this forensic psychologist who says, or relays studies that say that breaches of confidentiality are damaging therapy efforts, that child porn users aren’t that dangerous to children in a direct way, according to research. Much of that testimony will be redundant since their attorney can get most of that info out of our witnesses in cross examination. Then, their witness might talk about what else happens in therapy, or what motivates child porn users, like medicating anxiety states, sexual traumas–theirs, not those of the children in the…ya know.

B: What will you ask him in the cross examination?

A: Actually, our best chance is if he doesn’t show, so I have an idea. Remember, the Supreme Court back in 2020 put it on us, the state, to show that the 2015 amendment to CANRA protects children, otherwise the limiting of confidentiality rights may be deemed unconstitutional. So, we’re in trouble here: we can’t show that therapist reports are even happening on this matter, let alone that they’re leading to rescues. We got an expert witness who says that child porn use directly harms children so it shouldn’t matter that we can’t locate victims via therapist reports, but that argument’s about increasing arrests, convictions, and mandated treatment, which isn’t the point of the reporting law. So, we need a get out of jail card and I think it’s in this “no more delays” decree that the judge ordered last month. If we finish up Tuesday afternoon because we limit to a bare minimum our questions for our witnesses–which their side won’t expect–we’ll rest our case and the judge will turn to them. Their attorney says their witness is coming on Thursday, which means he’ll have to ask for a continuance, which the judge will deny. Then, we object that we’re denied a chance to cross examine, so the witness testimony should be struck from the record. And, because he’s their only witness, we’ll move to dismiss, saying they’re not presenting a case, even though they will have asked most of the questions at that point. So…why are you smiling?

B: It’s ingenious

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August 25, 2025 · 4:37 am

A psychoanalyst and sex addiction specialist spar

G: Hey there, welcome. This is Graeme Daniels, psychoanalyst and author. I am a co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction and more recently, the author of An Analyst in Training, and I am the winner of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Lee Jaffe prize for my paper, “Panal Treatment of an Alcoholic with Substitute Addictions”. I am here today with a guest, dr. Davide Sakmanov, host of the podcast, “the empathy coach”, plus the workbook, “do it the right way: a practical guide for behaving properly”. Davide Sakmanov, welcome to the show.

D: Thankyou for having me

G. So, Dr. Sakmanov—sorry, the doctor—is that a medical title?

D: No, it’s a sobriquet, as it were

G. A nickname? So, you’re Doctor Davide?

D: I prefer coach Davide. The doctor thing is more of a nom de guerre, if you will

G: Nom de guerre. So, this is war. And you’re not a doctor

D: Not as such

G: Or an academic?

D: Umm…define academic

G: a Ph.d, for example

D: No, not a Ph.d. Sorry, are we here to discuss my credentials?

G. Only if you don’t have any?

D: Alright, if it’s like that, then I’m an MSW, a CCPSC…

G: MSW—social work. CCPSC?

D: Certified Process Safety Professional

G. Is that a mental health credential?

D: It can be. Look, I thought we’re here to talk about my intervention model for the treatment of sex addicts and their impacted partners. You’ve written your big to-do paper on “substitute addictions” or whatever—good for you, and I read it in fact—but I’m here to talk about my model of care that emphasizes empathy. I call it the 2 Es idea—emphasis and empathy—that are the building blocks of a paradigm that has drawn countless listeners and followers…

G: Countless? I mean, if you’re referring to your podcast, it’s easy to track #s. It tells you how many people you have listening, so it’s only countless if you don’t know how to read numbers

D: Okay, thousands. Is that what you want to hear? I have thousands of listeners, and lots of readers

G: Lots?

D: Yes, lots. I’m popular. Very popular. You’re popular too, I’m sure, though I bet not AS popular as me

G: Okay, we’re popular. Maybe you’re more popular, let’s leave it at that, shall we? Let’s talk ideas

D: (relieved) Yes, thankyou. Gawd…

G: Okay, so in your model, the—lemme get this right, Recovery Empathy Couples Therapy Unified Mission– just thinking of what that spells, actually—you bring together couples who have been impacted by infidelity issues, sometimes other addiction issues (we’ll come back to what that means, maybe) to do interventions relating the traumatizing effects of cheating behavior, which includes use of online pornography, utilizing feedback from a treatment team of collaborating professionals. So, I’m curious in particular what that last part means, the “utilizing feedback” from a treatment team

D: Right, so as you probably know, old school therapy models, addiction models, recommend that the sexually misbehaving person, or perpetrator as we call him, does his personal therapy work privately while the woman does hers separately without any coordination that would make her feel safe. The thing is, as the partner, you have every right to know what he is doing and what his treatment plan consists of, and you get to weigh in as to what you believe will strengthen the relationship.

G: Well, there are a number of phrases there that bear exploration, but firstly, again, regarding “utilizing feedback” and say, the “right to know what he’s doing”: do you mean that impacted partners have a right to know, and therefore should know via feedback of a treating therapist, when a cheating behavior has occurred? Are you asking individual therapists to inform other therapists in a treatment team, and thereafter, their impacted partner clients, when a behavioral slip or relapse has occurred?

D: We can do it that way. I know of countless occasions when that has proven therapeutic both for the perpetrator of infidelity and the impacted partner. We know from our clinical experience that disclosing behavioral slips makes an impacted partner feel safer, plus it’s relieving for the other person to have that experience

G: Clinical experience. Not exactly proof, as you put it, but let’s say we agree that it can be therapeutic for an acting out person to reveal their secret behavior to a partner. But you’re suggesting, I think, that the disclosure would occur via an informant therapist, not the perpetrator, as you put it.

D. It doesn’t have to work like that. It would be best, I guess you’d say, if the perpetrator did the disclosing.

G: Under duress? Meaning, it would be “tell your partner or else we will”

D: See, I think you’re trying to make this something it’s not

G: I’m more than trying, I think I’ll succeed in making it sound like what it is. You’re saying that if a client in your program reveals to their individual therapist that they have slipped in their behavior—let’s say, looked at porn—then that individual therapist would communicate that information either directly to the impacted partner, or to that partner’s individual therapist, who would in turn relay that info to the impacted partner, yes?

D: Under the terms of an honesty agreement that we have our clients sign, then yes, that’s how that might play out. I don’t see a problem with that

G: The terms of an agreement? Is there an understood window of opportunity in which the acting out person must disclose to a partner?

D: We like 48 hours. We think that’s enough

G: Between disclosure to a therapist and thereafter to a partner, or between the onset of the behavior and disclosure to a partner?

D: Okay, well I guess the former in practical terms since the disclosure to us is when we’d remind the client of the honesty agreement

G: (upon pause) Do you find that they need reminding? Presumably, they are aware of this agreement all along, or certainly upon agreeing to it. You’d think it would influence whether they choose to share with a therapist an instance of cheating behavior, as your program defines that. Don’t you think that sets up a dynamic that contaminates the authenticity of disclosure? Why would your clients share their secrets with you if you’re going to either inform, in effect, their partners, or else guilt them into doing that?

D: I think you’re getting into the weeds here. Our method has helped untold number of couples heal after years, even decades of deceit and disloyalty

G: Which you seem to think you can dissolve with an honesty agreement and a “come to Jesus” moment in your office. I think you’d consider this matter “the weeds” because your training around confidentiality issues has been remedial

D: Remedial? Lemme tell you something, our program has gotten more positive feedback from all corners of this industry than your outdated psychoanalytic whatever…ever will

G: Again, I’m sure you’re a big hit on tik-tok

D: See, now you’re being a snob. Our program employs the golden seal of approval from leaders in the field of sex addiction: renowned experts in a condition that afflicts millions of men across the world

G: They’re experts in a condition not recognized by the AMA or APA, by the way.

D: It is recognized, meaning sexual compulsivity is recognized, by the WHO

G: Yeah, only as recently as 2017, and with a caveat within its criterion language that warns against diagnosis for moralistic reasons. You don’t merit diagnosis of sexual compulsivity disorder just because you “violated your own values”, like masturbating when you think it’s a religious sin, or because objectifying women via porn violates a feminist affectation. Also, why are men the only focus of your program? The pronouns you use imply that the perpetrators of this sexual abuse, as you think of it, are dominantly if not exclusively male

D: Not exclusively, but most are male. I think it’s harder for women, they have to face the stigma relating to their sexuality, so for them sex addiction or infidelity treatment is really shaming

G: which would be moot if the “right to know” or the “trauma” of their impacted partners were being privileged, as it is in your model. So, why wouldn’t male impacted partners be calling you in #s asking for you put their wives and girlfriends under privacy-violating cross-examination, to “hold their feet to the fire” with honesty agreements, full disclosures, polygraphs?

D: Like I said, I think it’s more complicated

G: Meaning you don’t know why you don’t attract male impacted partners

D: I think maybe they don’t want to appear weak so they don’t…who knows?

G: Sure, who knows? Women don’t want to be shamed for their sexual desires. Men don’t want to appear as victims, would rather act out and feel guilty—actually, that is something I think is true—but maybe these are side issues, “weeds” that are unworthy of attention, as far as you are concerned. Back to the main point: you think the impacted partner, likely female, has a “right to know” what the perpetrator is doing in his behavior. They have a right to know whether that perpetrator’s individual therapy is facilitating expression of appropriate guilt and awareness of the full impact of the perpetrator’s behavior upon their partner’s emotional, physical, and spiritual health

D: Absolutely!

G: And those perpetrators will gladly disclosure those slips and relapses, past and recent past, moved by your coaching about how their partners deserve to know the truth! They will be galvanized by learning the extent of their impact upon their loved ones—they will learn how they have induced hyper-arousal, high anxiety, self-blaming, in an innocent partner—and in developing this awareness, they will not only significantly reduce if not entirely halt their harmful sexual activity, they will take empathy to another level, privileging a definition of empathy as meaning the validation of an impacted partner’s feelings and perceptions, whether they are distorted or not: the “perpetrator” will eliminate argument from their repertoire of conversation; validation of their partner’s feelings and perceptions will become a near reflex. They will surrender their will to the power of God as they understand it. They will extinguish negative feelings that are denied but acted upon, and love…will prevail

D: I know you’re being sarcastic, but yes…all of that

G: Well, I doubt you understand all of that. And given your stance, plus—I will concede, that of many professional counselors, licensed and not—an astute consumer of psychotherapy might wonder why a mental health professional versus a clergyman is even necessary when it comes to infidelity treatment. A priest, or anyone for that matter, can say that an intimate partner has “a right to know” truths. Anyone can point out the common sense that secretive behaviors violate consciously made agreements about sexual exclusivity. What difference does it make that an “expert” can recite the criterion of PTSD syndrome. You want details? Vivid anecdotes to relate to? Go to CODA meetings. They existed long before you came up with what you think is your original “empathy” model.

D: Hold on. What is it you think I don’t understand?

G: Firstly, I don’t think you understand what I meant by “feelings that are denied but acted upon” because your model ignores unconscious process. I think you think that individuals can be coached to access their loving feelings, put aside what is implicit in acting out—angry feelings, underlying rage—and skip to guilt as a therapeutic tool that will heal. You think that perpetrators are NOT aware of the impacts of their behavior, hence needing education. They ARE aware to the extent that they attempted, at least, to keep their behaviors secret. To complicate matters, they are paradoxically in denial of impacts so as to protect themselves from feelings of guilt, which in turn stem from uncomfortable hostile feelings towards loved ones. It is therefore the INHIBITION of these thoughts, the failure to access AMBIVALENCE, that is THE PROBLEM. Your model, plus—I guess I’ll say, “countless” like it—emphasizes reactive love response designed to vanquish ambivalence. You think your clients or coachees can’t tolerate ambivalence, likely because you can’t tolerate ambivalence, so you preach “get over yourself” rhetoric

D: That’s not true. We talk about ambivalence. We understand ambivalence. We educate that ambivalence is normal

G: Yeah, educate, right. So, in this model of “She has a right to know” regarding slips, plus “what’s happening in the treatment”, that latter ambiguity implies that disclosure beyond the matter of perpetrating behaviors are subject to being relayed to the partner. Regarding empathy, if your client discloses a slip in empathy—let’s say, “I hated her guts yesterday”—that should be shared with the partner, or is there an agreed upon or tacit agreement that such thoughts would not be shared, and what would be the reason for not sharing? The client’s right to private thought? A fear that such thoughts would be traumatizing for the impacted partner, triggering a reactive outrage?

D: Probably more the latter. I see what you’re saying, there’s room for counselor discretion. I wouldn’t share that thought you mentioned. I think that would be re-traumatizing for the impacted partner, and plus I’d think that a defensive thought on the part of the guy

G: Probably true, though your thought about the impacted partner suggests an illustration of my earlier point: you think the impacted partner would not be able to tolerate the hostile feelings of her partner

D: She’d think he shouldn’t have those feelings, sure…

G: And you’d agree with her…

D: (Pause) yeah, I think so. Because I’d think he was being defensive. You said “probably” so maybe you disagree

G: I said probably because I wouldn’t foreclose the possibility that his anger may be legitimate, and that what’s defensive is the addictive acting out as a displacement, plus the inhibition of what may be a rightful protest

D: What rightful protest, hating his wife’s guts? How is that in any way healing?

G: Why do we have to rush to healing? Since neither of us is a doctor, can’t we look to understand the thought, which may only be an impulse, before we seek to eradicate it? So, forget informing the wife for the moment. If we did that, we’d likely get into managing or soothing her feelings, which I think interferes with the process of understanding, taking focus away from his internal problem. Besides, why not consider that the expression, “I hate her guts” is a reaction to a series of repressed thoughts, the content of which is obscured by what’s disturbing in the intense expression

D: Okay, I can see that, sort of…and I can see why we don’t have to share with an impacted partner, or encourage sharing with an impacted partner, every time this guy has an undesirable thought…

G: Right, so…

D: At the same time, I’d be concerned that by inviting more details about this rightful protest that is speculative, we’d be indulging a defensive pattern, which would take us in the wrong direction

G: That presumes a bi-linear process, plus the bias that all negative thoughts are a “slippery slope” that must be avoided. But lemme give an example: a man and his wife are in household garden together, having what at first seems like a benign disagreement about an arrangement of flowers. At first, the problem is that he had gone ahead with the flower arrangement without consulting with her. As they talk about it, the conflict escalates. He says, “what’s the problem?”. She says, “it looks fucking stupid!” and further starts cussing him out, after which he complains that she’s always abusing him or talking down to him. That scene ends with her storming off, shouting “I want a divorce” over her shoulder. Backstory is layered, the presenting problem at least 2-fold: 3 years ago, he was caught cheating on her, getting caught on film with another woman at a party—pictures and video posted online—then they went into couples counseling. He stopped the affair, acknowledged the pain he caused and listened to a lot of podcasts on that subject, has passed 3 polygraphs since, and generally lives in the proverbial doghouse. After a year of little more than mea culpas he says he started bringing up in couples therapy how she mistreats him…as in the flower arrangement instance. She admits she can cross a line and be harsh sometimes but says it’s because she’s still angry and traumatized about the betrayal of their marriage through his infidelities

D: (pause) So, what’s the issue? Doesn’t that make sense? She’s been traumatized by his betrayal, now she’s sensitive to his not talking about things with her, so she gets upset because, as you might think as an analyst, the flower thing is a substitute for the affair-seeking plus keeping it secret and ignoring her. The task is for him to acknowledge the links there, show that he understands why she’s upset, and apologize for the fact that he doesn’t share his thoughts with her while he goes about doing whatever he wants to do…

G: I agree with what you’re saying to an extent: I’ve no problem with acknowledgements, the apologies, especially for not sharing his thoughts, and I appreciate your “it actually isn’t what it is” attitude towards the seeming source of conflict, the flower arrangement. However, your position still presumes a unilateral disorder, likely grounded in, as you might put it, “old school” addiction narratives: that person has THE problem, etc. Anyway, the thing is this: he says the abusive language got worse after discovery of his affair-seeking, but the condescending attitude, her talking down to him, is long-standing, is almost as old as the relationship itself so it predates the betrayal, and to compound the problem with irony, when he brings this up either with her or with therapists—and they had at least one episode prior his acting out pattern, he claims—both his wife and therapists dismissed the subject

D: Well, I’m not sure I buy that, especially if they were in therapy before the sex addiction or just cheating behavior started. As for now, I generally think it’s a problem to muddy the waters of treatment, focusing on matters that could be just a way to excuse the acting out behavior

G: But that in itself strikes me as a splitting response—that is, a black and white way of looking at the problem. You deny the possible or maybe likely complexity of the problem because it takes focus away from a singularly defined task, and also because that background complexity appears to justify acts of escapism. No one is saying that. That’s rather what you are inferring from the speculation of an old relational dynamic for which both parties bear responsibility, even if those responsibilities are rendered asymmetrical by the betrayal of infidelity. In my “clinical experience”, a variety of problems get shelved and obscured by the specter of sexual betrayal: betrayals relating to substance use, money, parenting choices, to name some issues. Only the specter of violence supersedes sexual betrayal as a source of clinical attention. Indeed, this may be the principal reason why cheating or sexual betrayals perpetrated by women are marginalized in most models pertaining to these problems. What’s the priority? The safety of a partner discovered in her cheating behavior by an angry, or otherwise abusive male. I have no evidence of this bias per se, but maybe you can tell me: if you had a female client who had cheated on her male partner, would you insist on that honesty agreement and pressured disclosure if she said she was afraid of his temper?

D: (wearily pausing) I don’t know. Maybe you’re right in one sense about this being complicated, and maybe that’s because there isn’t a moral equivalence about these kinds of situations.

G: Wait, what do you mean by that, moral equivalence?

D: Well, basically that women have more cause to be afraid of men’s anger than the reverse

G: So, what are you saying? Does that set up a double standard with respect to honesty agreements? Do you employ “man up and get honest” interventions with male acting out partners, but then refrain from coercive rhetoric with the fewer female subjects you treat?

D: I don’t think of it as a double standard. Again, I think this is a moral equivalence issue

G: How about we call it rationalized asymmetry. There. I’ve coined a new piece of therapeutic jargon

D: Yeah, I don’t know. Like I said, I just think we’re getting into the weeds here on some of these issues. People come to me, they come to you, wanting help, practical help mostly, with what to do when they’ve done something, maybe a lot of something, that they feel bad about and they want to make a repair, express their love despite whatever other feelings they have, move on and be happy. That’s what it all about, I think, and all I can say is that I think my empathy model has helped a lot of people to find spiritual wellness, forgiveness, peace, and overall happiness. Exactly how many people, I don’t know…just…

G: Countless people. Yes, I know. Well, thank you for coming on the show, Mr. or Doctor Sakmanov

D: How about coach Dave?

G: Sure, anyway this has been an episode of Getting Real About…well, I’d say psychoanalysis, or formerly sex addiction—not sure what to call this at the moment. It isn’t quite what it is, maybe. Thanks for listening

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July 22, 2025 · 6:41 pm

Tools

I read your email earlier today and it’s been on my mind most of the afternoon–in between sessions, at least. I took some notes, wanted to retain elements as I wrote back: there was an incoming text. You immediately confessed. I was struck by what was tacit: the other woman, you’ve been caught, etc. Then the quick fallout. You leave the house. A custodial split is arranged. NO talking–par for the course, it seems. The next bit tells me where you’re at in my podcast series: you’ve thought about the Madonna/Whore split. Your wife’s the Madonna, the total saint. But you’re sexually incompatible, meaning you’re not asexual. 

Who knows what your rep is with her. Hypersexual? The dichotomizing would fit with how far apart you seem from each other. So, the psychological splitting became tangible. She wanted a divorce. You wanted to reconcile, but perhaps you didn’t know how to start the conversation. Actually, I find that most (usually men) in your situation know how to start the conversation: apologies, promises, reassurances, etc. It’s what comes next that’s the problem. It’s good that you don’t blame your wife for your acting out with a consensual partner. What’s not good is that you and your wife never resolved your differences about love and sex. For that you’re both to blame. 

That doesn’t mean the fuller conversation’s easy. It’s hard for a myriad of reasons, some of which implicate parenting rationales. Example: “Let’s not fight in front of the kids. It’ll be traumatic for them”. Great. I guess that means they’ll learn how to resolve conflict via peers, the internet, or some other magical influence. Actually, it means they’ll learn to say “I’m done with…” when they have interpersonal problems of their own, accept forgiveness when they don’t agree they’ve done anything to merit forgiveness, or offer forgiveness under similarly false pretenses; outsource their needs for love and sex, possibly abuse drugs, largely because dealing with difficult people is…well, too hard, it seems.

The sociocultural context you indicate does matter, as many of my podcast commentaries argue. I imagine you may have felt inhibited from raising the issue of sexual incompatibility, afraid you’d be rebuked for having excessive or perverse sexual needs; for objectifying women, or oppressing them with sexual entitlement; for “having only one thing on your mind”. There’s little to suggest that men in our progressively-minded society will feel in any way affirmed for feeling unwanted by their female partners. The concept of Narcissism, weaponized as it is in pop psychology circles (it’s amazing how many therapists actually know very little about theories of Narcissism), is employed to critique masculine ego and tame men’s desire. 

You ask a compelling question about how betrayed partners might reconcile. Where is the gray, you ask, in between profuse mea culpas and frozen impasses? These are the toughest of your questions. I don’t have a simple answer. I’ve worked with some betrayed (female) partners who come to recognize that the Narcissism in their marriages was shared–meaning, they’ve fell in love with and admired the strength in their male partners, their “winning” qualities. This is an important sociocultural point because pop psychologists who lament that men “don’t get in touch with their feelings (they mean vulnerability)” tend to overlook how traditional and even feminist women collude with that phenomenon via their attractions to stoical, ambitious, not observably vulnerable men. Reconciliation? Consciousness is where it starts, I’d say. After the apologies and assurances have been made, and each party has taken its share of “time-outs”, or employed other “tools” of how to manage feelings, then the task is to STOP managing feelings and instead really get into those thoughts and feelings like you’ve never done before. Question is, how bad is everyone willing to feel to get to the truth?

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June 24, 2025 · 1:41 am

You want honesty?

“I don’t feel like I can be honest”

The lament of the…well, of many people, but here, today, in this context, I’ll stick to an old chestnut–the compulsive person–and let the reader extrapolate what they will. What can’t they be honest about? their problem behaviors: drugs, sex, violence. If you have forbidden or just difficult thoughts are you meant to share them? Is there really a gap between thought and behavior? Think quickly, your compulsive self doesn’t think (think?) so. Meanwhile, doesn’t a complaint about honesty imply a willingness to listen to thoughts that acting out behaviors displace?

For those confused by that question, I shall retrace my steps and describe the concept of “acting out” as first explained by Freud (1914). Action replaces thought, feeling, and memory. Compulsive behaviors, for example, are substitutive: they displace energy from one objectionable idea to another, and the latter idea, though objectionable, is actually a lesser idea. That’s right, says the average dissenter, straining to understand this cant yet suspicious of its source…sounds NPR-like, or something. Yes, annihilating another or others in the plural may yield a sting of guilt, but it’s preferable to the sting of victimization, which is belittling, annihilating and, for the sake of posterity…so ultimately shaming. Make me great, as in big, again, not small. The small do not win, H.G. Wells be damned*.

An illustration, perhaps. A person has a complaint about an intimate partner–said partner has become less attractive physically. She’s a women whose hips have expanded. He’s a man sporting a “dad-bod”. Or, either has become difficult in some personal habit and is obstinate in the face of protest. “That’s your problem”, they dismiss, not perceiving the cliff of calamity that can greet such carelessness. The person who “acts out” with porn, drink, an affair, the reckless spending of money, is typically seeking an escape from such impasses. Not so fast, argue those cathected to the narratives of compulsivity. They aver that addicts will do what they do when they want to no matter what stressors or stimulants exist, therefore dog-whistling deflections are contra-indicated, if you please. Sorry, allow me a moment to slap my hand that taps on a keyboard, chastise the mind that thinks what it thinks. See, a question remains, slipping past the modern repressive: do the rules du jour mean that the “obstinate” partner is at fault for the mooted acting out that may or may not follow–ya know, that spending, hoarding, drinking, to infidelity and therefore betrayal hierarchy?

No, and the reader, if you haven’t already opened a new tab and becoming ensconced in a video instead, may notice that I will dodge dichotomies as if they are intellectual potholes. What I am saying is that conflict avoidance is the meta-essence of escapism, and that “acting out” and so-called betrayed partners share a responsibility–that’s right, share–for the relational phenomenon of checking out. Regarding those complaints about your physicality, your lessened drive, your attribution of “this is all you want” to your plaintive other, your wearying politics, or your fixed notions of what constitutes romance and “genuine love”–all the things about which you are politer, more open-minded during the the courting stage of a relationship. So, do you really want to talk about all that stuff, and potentially revise your views. Yes? No? What do you want?

** a reference to The War of the Worlds wherein the tiny, heroic virus does what humanity can’t: defeat the alien

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June 1, 2025 · 6:29 am

Adam is in charge

Infidelity treatment relies upon assumptions of asymmetry: you have perpetrator/victim, or wrongdoer/victim, or “survivor”—or the more right and the more wrong. This is why couples therapy, with its hoary repertoire of agreements, homework assignments, “boundaries”, is rife with tacit messages that obviate egalitarianism. The perpetrator owes the victim, not the reverse, so agreements are not symmetrical. Communication? That means inform the victim of what you’re doing and when. The victim or betrayed or impacted partner (whatever?) doesn’t have to inform the acting out partner (perpetrator of infidelity) of their whereabouts or activities.

This arrangement is based on a premise that often collapses in long-term or analytic psychotherapy, which is often why couples might prefer short-term therapy programs. To put is simply, its narratives are simpler.

Sexual betrayal is the most important traumatic betrayal in an adult intimate relationship, second only to violence. Betrayals relating to money or other material matters (i.e: hoarding behaviors) do not cross as high a threshold of moral abhorrence. Likewise, disputes about how or under what circumstances parents discipline children, or political divisions, simply do not register as high on the scale of marital or couples crises. Monogamy is our ego-syntonic signifier of specialness, a vestige of healthy narcissism that a crossection of traditional and progressive society clings to. It’s the bar we’re not meant to cross, the rule we’re not meant to break, and the lies that conceal this violation only compound the problem. Therefore, the perpetrator has no refuge in protesting the rule he implicitly agreed to upon signing up for the game. The eternal bind: if I said I wanted to____, you’d just say no…

The person who utters this line can usually locate its pedigree. They can recall the antecedent messages from childhood, in aggregate if not from specific instances. They learned early to “compartmentalize”: to postpone pleasure but also truth, and therefore plan the escape routes, the opportunities for play, keeping their artifices and desires secret so as not to intrude upon another desire: to not do harm; to stay in relationship with authority, or civil society. See, truth does harm. Desire is harmful, so we—the Superego—forbids. That’s religion, which feels autocratic and thus objectionable to some. It is necessary and benevolent, say its advocates. Regardless, all agree that the containment of desires call for compromises, agreements with varying degrees of importance attached. Some will call these agreements covenants.

Sexual exclusivity, fidelity in body if not mind, is a compromise traditionally agree upon. Secrecy, as in the segregation from awareness, is another idea of compromise, promulgated with less ceremony perhaps, but with more or less equal force. We’d extend this ethic to all matters between people, but on the matter of sex we are more sensitive. So, the sexual wrongdoer is a deviant, a transgressor, and under the protective canopy of sex addiction or infidelity treatment, they are neither rebels nor underdogs. Indeed, they are privileged abusers. And this is why treatment models aim primarily at men. As social underdogs whose sexuality has already been stigmatized by traditional society, women fit progressive society’s paradigm of whom we advocate for, so we’d need to alter the narrative and vocabulary when they present with the more euphemistically termed problem sexual behavior. Consult CHATgbt on trending jargon: “perpetrator” would not make the cut. Exit narcissism also. Enter PTSD or maybe internalized misogyny. Invoke tales of contracting STDs via similarly promiscuous men, unwanted pregnancies for which abortion options are unavailable; suffered violence at the hands of cuckolded men. Recall that in our moral schema, only violence trumps sexual betrayal in the scale of wrongdoing, so break out the apologist arguments, tilt that narrative into sympathy. Or, push it one step further with circular reasoning, unfalsifiable statements: Adam is in charge. 

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April 21, 2025 · 6:09 am

Wow

Wow…

              The narrow hallway of the eighth floor stretches westwards to a cul de sac and a small waist-high window letting in sun from a Pacific horizon. You can almost hear the echoes of an architect screaming to a builder, give ‘em some light, please. The units are a good dozen to a floor, expertly welded into a taut floor plan that allows an illusion of space being devoted elsewhere. As I walk down the wing towards Steve’s address, I note the change in color scheme and the insulated feeling. The walls are a cobalt blue exuding calm and security, a far cry from the sunburnt orange that adorned the interior when I’d first visited years ago. The once-well trodden carpet, similarly singed, has been replaced by a thicker material that fully absorbs footsteps, vacating the last sounds of an old creaking floorboard. Disconcerting, I imagine, for those residents whose ears are never far from a front door, worried that someone unauthorized might be in the building, stalking.

              I press on Steve’s doorbell and hear no sound. Even the ping of a simulated bell is subdued in this determinedly buffered setting. Steve answers the door, beams half of his amiable smile through the crack and then opens up the space after the briefest of hesitations. I walk in past a plain door, unpocked by ornate divots, with only a penny-sized spy-hole blemishing its surface. Doesn’t he trust it? I wonder, regarding Steve’s pause.

              “Hello dear boy”, he says in a slightly affected voice—his nod to my British heritage, which he thinks entails people greeting each other with overwrought expressions because that’s how they do it in period dramas or hoary Ealing comedies that somehow drift into modern minds. He gestures welcome with a wave of his palm and beckons me past a kitchenette towards a cluster of furniture and dense ephemera. Apologies follow: “sorry about the…”, and “I’ve been meaning to…”. When we lived together, once upon a time, I might have scoffed and remonstrated, depending upon my mood. In my fantasy of lived disgust, I might have kicked something, sent a console, a bucket of food, or a lounging pet flying across the room. That’s when we had standards followed by expectations, plus an appetite for conflict. It’s years later now, so like the walls and the floorspace, the feelings have softened. Anyway, nothing in this space serves as a centerpiece. It’s all a trail of bits and pieces, some discarded, others merely detained ahead of a hateful deportation. The inviolate fixtures are a wall-sized television and a triumvirate of computer screens that transform a living space into the semblance of a stock exchange floor.

              I am stepping over and in between piles of consumer and consumed goods, heading for a dead end. “Sorry”, says Steve, realizing there’s nowhere to sit. Outside, on a tight veranda overlooking a glassy vista and concrete cityscape, there’s space for a chair that looks dusty and unused and flanked by a wooden structure partially wrapped in mesh wire.

              “It’s okay for me to stay, right?” I ask uncertainly, half-plaintively.

              “Oh sure, sure,” he replies. “In fact, I might be joining you. My friend Sara also might come”.

              I stare back with a blank expression, thinking there’s a piece that’s awry in Steve’s thought. “Might come? You’re thinking of coming to my graduation?”

              Steve’s neck snaps backwards as his eyes roll upwards. It’s like I’ve delivered a blow to his right side and he’s heading down for the count. “Aw shit, that’s right! I forgot about your thing. Sorry, I’ve been all turned around lately. I thought you might be at the protest tomorrow”.

              “Nah, I don’t think so,” I respond coolly, having half-expected this misunderstanding of why I’m visiting his urban lair. Steve shrugs. “Any chance you can come by later, maybe we can have dinner together, you can meet Sara”.

              I could care less about his friend Sara. “I’ll be eating at the center with some colleagues. There’s a dinner gathering after the ceremony”. He nods faintly. He can tell by the flat tone and terse delivery that I’m annoyed he’s forgotten.

              “Got it. This is your training program you’ve been doing, huh? That Freud thing”.

              “Analytic training”

              “Right. Do you get a pipe and a tweed jacket, or something?”

              This quip merits an indulgent grin, not quite the derisive smirk I’d prefer to give. I have his half-effortful hospitality to think of, to feel grateful for, though a hotel room will seem a good alternative at this point. Making a token effort, Steve grabs a cushion, wipes a swath of litter from a couch—ostensibly my bunk for the night. Then he asks that I excuse a phalanx of cans and bottles atop an adjoining breakfast table. “I’ll get rid of them later,” he says. “They’re just rinsing out, don’t want to put them away and get mildew”. That pings a memory. Back in the day, Steve was often saying stupid things like this to justify not doing something.

              “What’s the box for on the balcony”. I don’t care about this box just beyond a sliding door any more than I do his friend, but the awkwardness of Steve’s neglect is impinging upon my nerves.

              “That’s for chickens,” he says, prefacing an impending spiel.

              Chicken shit, I’m inclined to reply. “Doesn’t look big enough,” I say, indicating the box’s seeming three-foot length, its piecemeal disposition. “Where are the chickens?”

              Steve often answers questions not yet asked, aiming for what he knows instead. “Soon”, he says. “Collecting them this weekend. Been planning this for weeks, studying the raising of foul for ages. Gonna grow my own eggs, get ahead of rising prices. I just gotta put the box together some, wrap the mesh around it, do one or two other things”.

              “So, it’s a coop”

              “Sort of, mini one. Got a southern exposure here, plenty of sunshine. No predators around, of course. Just gotta watch the weather. Should be okay in spring heading into summer, though”

              “You got enough space? Kinda tight out there, isn’t it?

              “They only need a few square feet to walk, run around in”

              “Take a shit in”

              “No kidding. Got a few bags of shavings to lay down. Gonna start with three, see how they do, whether they fight, which happens if there isn’t enough space”

              “Don’t you have a cat?”

              “Miete? She died last year. Thought you knew”

              “Maybe you told me. I would’ve remembered, I think. Sorry”

              “No worries. Anyway, you ready for your big day?”

              Steve held a sudden look of cheer upon his face, suggesting I’d touched a nerve mentioning his cat. Now my life was a useful pretext for a change of subject, his chicken interest notwithstanding.

              I heave a practiced sigh. “Been ready for I don’t know how long. Feels like I’ve been doing this forever”

              “I bet. You started this…when?” I can tell he needs me to fill in all of the gaps of his unknowing, and as I do, I’ll see that his eyes glaze over and his mind will drift back to images of plywood, mesh wire and carefully marshalled chicken shit.

              “Seven years ago is when it started. You might remember the last night I stayed here overnight. I was applying still, had interviews with institute faculty at Zion hospital the next day”

              “Right. I remember that now. I seem to recall you saying it would take a few years, not seven though. Why so long?

              “Some elements are like college—you complete four years of seminar. The cases that are analytic: they have to get approved, plus you have to write an academic paper that’s more or less like a doctoral thesis. That’s what took the longest”

              “So remind me, if you don’t mind, what happens next? Do you get an extra credential?”

              “I’m a psychoanalyst”

              “Okay, you’ve said that before. But what does that mean? Could I just call you up and ask you for psychoanalysis, come lie on a couch in your office and have you interpret my dreams?”

              “That’s the last thing you’d want, believe me”

              Steve burst out a light chuckle. “Why? Am I that bad? Beyond help?”

              “Let’s just say it wouldn’t be your thing. You’re more of a go-to-a-retreat, take ketamine with somebody watching and then have what you think is a cathartic experience followed by a day at a spa.”

              “I have done something like that actually. My therapist, whom I see about four times a year recommended something similar to me, only with psilocybin, not ketamine”

              “So, did you do that?

              “Not yet. Haven’t gotten around to it. We’ve been doing EMDR, which I also find cathartic—lots of childhood stuff comes up for me. Deep stuff. You should try it. Or, you should get the certificate for it, gets lots of clients that way”

              “I did…twenty years ago. Now I do psychoanalysis, that Freudian thing I’ve mentioned a few times over the last few years. It’s different. It’s an older model of treatment: the patient speaks. An analyst listens. No drugs. No tricks. And you meet four times a week, not four times in a year.”

              “Four times a week! You’re kidding”

              I am not kidding, my face says. I’ve said this to him before, several times in fact.

              Steve’s incredulity resumes: “I mean, I know you’ve mentioned that before, I just can’t believe anyone does that. Jeez, who can do that? Who has the money for it?”

              “You’re presuming that an analyst would charge you three hundred dollars per hour like the person who watches you take acid does”

              “Well, okay, so you’re saying it’s less expensive, but still…the time…”

              “What about it?”

              “Who has the time? Plus, I don’t know. I’d run out of things to say”

              For a half-minute I remain still-faced, myself incredulous, except to think you might. I hold my mean-spirited tongue, for a moment at least. I gaze around, shoot incriminating glances at random objects that signify a random existence.

              “The time? Like the time spent staring at that trio of screens, or that massive Orwellian eye in the middle of your wall-space? The time spent binging on eye candy, brain candy, or actual candy? Run out of things to say? If you mean platitudes, banal chatter, the dinner theater of modern politics, then sure, you’d run out of things to say? If you mean catching up on what’s happening in your life, or even retaining what’s happening after the last time you spoke to someone, then sure you’ll run out of things to say. If you mean external events, or how’s your health or how’s the family doing, or the kind of stuff anyone can understand without much effort at explanation, then sure you’ll run out of things to say. If you mean the stuff that you think others will understand or not form a half-understanding judgement or sample of disgust about, then sure you’ll run out of things to say”

              At once, Steve frowns and speaks in a low, measured voice.

              “You sound annoyed. Have I annoyed you?”

              I pause for effect and hold my friend’s attention with a fixed, unblinking glare. “That’s psychoanalysis,” I say.

              He shakes his head, befuddled. “What? what is psychoanalysis?”

              “What you just did. You responded as if everything I just said had something to do with you, or you and I”

              “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to make this about me—”

              “I’m not criticizing that, you prat. It is about you and me. That’s what I’m saying—what you just did was an analytic thing to do, and a truly interpersonal thing to do, only it’s ironic because you think it’s merely self-centered”

              He shook his head again. “Right. What? What are you saying? Making it about me, or about you and I is the right thing. How can that be?”

              “It’s easy if you think about a principle that you haven’t been studying and thinking about for nearly a decade but I have. It’s this: when YOU’RE TALKING TO SOMEONE, WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY IS AT LEAST PARTLY AND SOMETIMES MOSTLY ABOUT THEM”

              “Why are you yelling?

              “I’m not…okay, I am…just because you haven’t listened, not really. Nobody really…”

              By this point Steve was staring at me like an emergency room nurse performing a mental health exam. “My big day. It is a big day, and I didn’t fully realize until today that it bums me out that you barely understand what it’s about, this big day of mine.  You think it’s a kind of joke, featuring cliches…”

              “Wow, I never said—”

              “I know you never said. You never had to say it directly. And it’s not your fault. It’s at least mine as well, the fact that we don’t get each other”. I gaze about his living space again. “I don’t get how you can live like this. That’s my judgement. You’re like those chickens you’re gonna raise. You wanna know how? They don’t have sphincters, chickens. They don’t control their shit. They just walk around and release and they don’t pick up after themselves. Someone else has to do that for them”.

              This remark freezes my old friend. He looks stunned, eternally undecided. Trying to seem poised, Steve walks over to his front door and pulls it open like he wants me to leave. With a cold, glassy shine in his eye, he asks, “How’s your wife doing?”

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March 23, 2025 · 9:00 pm

Lent

Lent. I’m meant to be in self-denial, abstaining from my habits in observance of grief. I’ll have to call her back, tell her I’m not coming. I don’t want to, though my reasons are no longer about sex. I already made the date, and I’m minutes away now. Damned regret. Always happens in the minutes following the decision, when there’s time enough to think. It shouldn’t be like that. Instead, it should be like magic, like a burst across a threshold into a bathed red-lid room. You’re in, and there’s nothing left to think about until it’s over, after which the thinking is all downhill. I’m going to hell. Anyway, this isn’t like that yet. This is still ripe with anticipation and surging dread. The picture’s still in my head of my would-be date laying enticingly on a bed against the base of a camera phone, peering into it, upside down, assuming a position below the viewer’s gaze, summoning from her void with her gravitational pull. The picture from the site reveals where she lives, where she stays for hours upon hours, waiting for a hungry text, an appeal. Is she available? Of course she is. Give her a minute, she says. Give her ten. Then come right over. That’s how long it takes her to splash on some make-up, deodorize a crevice or two, and then appear within a shadowy entrance behind a frayed screen door. Does she have a cancellation policy? Does her business model attend to regret, besides squeezing the time between contact and consummation, ever narrowing the gap, making it an exact science. Get ‘em in, get ‘em out, before they change their minds. That will have been the training. The real pros, the elders of the schema will have taught how to deal with buyer’s indecision and remorse.

              So, it’s an obligation now, not just a pleasure activity. Actually, it’s not much of a pleasure, now that I think of it. When and if I think of it. I feel nothing as I approach rendezvous: no excitement, not even fear. Just a dull buzz creeping in my ears as I pull into a space and reconnaissance the scene from a nearby parking lot. White noise in my head, I look out: just a strip-mall with a liquor store, a smoke and donut shop, plus a condo spread, practically attached: a blur of commerce and cheap living where the ring cameras outnumber the people and the whiff of cheap weed permeates the neighborhood. The abodes are across an iron fence divide, on a second floor overlooking an unkempt garden quad. Dry vegetation covers a dirt patch that no one has serviced while an adolescent palm tree sprouts hopefully through its center. Debris is pooled in a cemented corner, slipping down the cracks of broken stone that protrudes because an eruption of some kind once occurred and then just…stopped. A woman passes my car, shoots a glance at me, then again as she moves past a tattoo parlor, heading towards the housing units. There’s a hint of a smile on a taut face, possibly a come on, or a knowing smirk. Is she my date? I wonder as she enters a gate to the complex. Or is it a disapproving neighbor? She turns disinterestedly and makes no further eye contact, which puts paid to the first idea. If she was waiting for someone, she’d have looked a third time, I figure. Instead, I look up to see whether a curtain will stir from a window, revealing a pair of eyes spying on the lot, waiting on a visitor. I want recognition, then a sign, a further invitation, like a crooked finger gesture, plus a shifty look elsewhere to indicate risk and thrill. 

              Two gallant duties come to mind: firstly, to complete this act, perform due diligence. It’s only fair, after all. This is how one faction of the other half lives, how it makes its living, and who am I to tease with opportunity only to then back out due to moral neurosis. But the other voice is strong also, knowing that thought number one is merely guilt displaced from its proper source. It’s saying it’s that time of year, to sacrifice pleasure and observe pain, and then feel its grim satisfaction. There’s justice to be served here of an ancient kind, plus an old penance to be paid. The church is only blocks away. Still time to turn on the ignition, back out of this space, and have no one mortal be any wiser except yourself. That curtain will stir and those waiting eyes will watch you back away, and tsk in stolid disgust, but you have blessed comfort and sanguine wishes awaiting. The incensed ambience, seminarian dignity, and fraternal order is welcoming, and promissory of sanctum. The glances there will be modest and kind, not cynical, opportunistic, and there will be no crud gathered in the corners of a doorway, and no acrid taste in my mouth. So, I’ve made a decision. The desire for this other thing is gone now, for now. I feel its leaving, like it might as well have absented itself days ago. There are weeks left in Lent, and maybe I’ll face this battle again before the season’s over and the feast begins anew. I get out my phone and text, “sorry, can’t make it”, with no explanation, knowing it wouldn’t matter. Minutes later I’m at the church, feeling like I deserve to be there, and there’s no pause between my turning off the car’s engine and opening the door. As I exit, I feel the buzz of my phone and glance down to see the terse reply of my disappointed date. “You’re an idiot”, she writes.

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February 23, 2025 · 8:30 am

Bumper sticker treatment

I’ve heard it before a thousand times. I wrote about it in a book that was published three years ago by a prominent exponent of modern psyche literature: Rowman & Littlefield, now Bloomsbury. Getting Real About Sex Addiction could have been written twenty or thirty years ago, largely because not much has changed in that time. Some who toil in the field of sex addiction think that much has changed in that time because they weren’t in the field prior to that point and think that the things they observe and talk about weren’t being noticed before they came along. Well, some things, like bumper sticker treatment, have not changed at all.

              A woman calls me up, asks if I treat sex addiction, as my web profile suggests I do. I confirm that I do, though I add that I don’t presume that condition upon meeting a prospective patient. Rather, I assess a person’s situation over time, explore the meaning of concepts like addiction, compulsion, voyeurism, monogamy, sexual freedom, etc. “Uh-huh”, says the woman. “What about integrity?” she asks, which signals that she’s either done some reading on these subjects or else had a conversation or two with a sex addiction specialist. I think this because SA specialists like to use words like integrity while claiming they aren’t judgmental and aren’t looking to impose their morality on anyone. That means they think masturbation isn’t as sinful as religious zealots think it is, that pre-marital sex is normal and healthy, and that habitual porn use might be okay as long as one isn’t lying about it to an intimate partner. Pause. That is an area of moral judgmental, they might concede: don’t lie, or keep secrets and then lie when confronted about said secrets. Actually, that’s not a moral judgement, they’ll amend. It’s merely ethical, or it’s about values, which is conveniently broad and ambiguous. Ethics is not the same thing as morals. Ethics is morality light, and it’s humanistic, vaguely feministic, as opposed to being hoarily patriarchal and otherwise over-doggish.

              Anyway, my woman caller sort of blocked out of her mind the bit about exploring meaning because she’s already determined certain meanings. She dissociated, some might offer, on the hint of uncertainty—an aspect of her trauma, perhaps. When trauma is invoked in this context it’s another way of saying that thinking has stopped when something cognitively dissonant arises. She’s already diagnosed her husband as a sex addict having checked boxes on an online questionnaire and then watched videos about narcissism, which is often tagged as a sex addiction companion. “It’s not a diagnosis”, I say pedantically, referring to sex addiction, not narcissism. It doesn’t matter. It might as well be a diagnosis as far as this caller is concerned. She thinks several other labels are diagnoses also, all because someone has attached the word disorder to a series of bad words. She says she’s done her research. That doesn’t mean scholarly, peer-reviewed professional psyche literature. She’s been listening to a podcast about betrayed partners comprised entirely of female subjects, and speaking to a sex addiction specialist who delivered a familiar chestnut of preliminary telephone consultation: “his behavior has nothing to do with you”. It’s hard to say when this greatest hit of infidelity treatment intervention was first drawn from the pop psyche toolkit. Claudia Black’s Deceived, published in 2009, featured a chapter that was headed by the phrase, and I’ve heard it quoted back to me countless times since, at least. Apologists for this brand of proto-counsel will staunchly defend the necessity of making such a pronouncement early in a treatment episode, even before it has properly begun. The rationale includes the following: the importance of reducing blame that is typically directed at impacted partners, which includes the likelihood that the sexually addictive pattern has been lied about for protracted periods, possibly years, and that the betrayed partner has been made to feel stupid or crazy for having harbored suspicions of secretive, unfaithful behavior. Beyond the compulsivity of the behavior itself, this pattern of lying, of obfuscating (SA specialists like that word too) constitutes a form of psychological abuse tantamount to an act of rape. Therefore, it is necessary to validate the long-denied suspicions and declare a new era of healing wherein all assertions by the designated sex addict are taken with a fat grain of salt.

              Just one or two…or three, four, or five things to inject here: firstly, as suggested earlier, this assessment category—sex addiction—is not exactly an exactly defined condition, let alone something that can be pronounced with ironic impulsivity. So, as an introductory intervention, the treatment-orienting, bumper sticker pronouncement—“his behavior has nothing to do with you”—is predicated on an assessment of sex addiction that has not been properly made when this pearl of support is typically delivered the first time. It is an a priori, or presumptive supposition. Were a range of unfaithful behaviors cast as hitherto unknown, in which case the full scope of the behavioral pattern would also be unknown, the behaviors might be characterized as non-addictive, maybe aberrant, and therefore imbued with relational meaning: it was a “revenge” affair; the unfaithful partner was feeling lonely because the so-called impacted partner was verbally abusive, neglectful—in other words, the unfaithful behavior was very much to do with them, as it were. As the reader might glean, or know if having read my 2-year old blog entries or a handful of my podcast episodes over the last couple of years, this narrative is largely reserved for women who present for infidelity or sex addiction treatment. Actually, back up: the presumptive narrative is such that a would-be female patient would likely not be cast as a sex addict so quickly unless they were self-identifying as such.

              This is the real reason why sex addiction treatment is dominantly aimed at men—nothing to do with “lesser resources for women in psychotherapy”, which is a BS cover story promulgated informally by sex addiction cognoscenti who either ignore that most psychotherapists are now women, or they tacitly believe that anyone who hasn’t earned one of their precious sex addiction merit badge certificates is not really qualified to indoctrinate the consumer base with their bloated assumptions and derivative theories. The theory and meta-psychology on the gender disparity is as follows: many social workers, couples therapists, psychologists, etc., hold a semi-educated view that Freudian theory remains applicable to masculine sexuality and ego while asserting that it doesn’t apply to women. That Freudian theory holds that the human mind operates in a more or less economic manner, discharging libido, seeking to achieve a state of homeostasis that controls or lessens stimulation, including excitement and restive anxiety. Humans “discharge” is the idea, ultimately seeking equilibrium. The psyche or mental apparatus, as Freud put it, experiences vicissitudes, quotas of affect, a primarily quantitative manifestation of desire and need. Many still believe heartily that this theory of mind adequately explains masculine mentality, or at least masculine sexuality, therefore male sex behavior is not relational: “he” seeks pleasure regardless of context, or emotional state, much less the qualitative state of an intimate relationship. Ergo, the phenomenon of sex addiction, including the prejudice that it exists much more in men, is simply a derivative of this roughly one-hundred year old economic model of the mind.

              See, somewhere in the mid-20th century, along came object relations theory (a subdivision of psychoanalysis), plus humanistic and feminist influences upon modern psychology, to assert that not all minds work like this, and that women’s minds certainly don’t work like this, and that we should all think more positively, more wholesomely, more relationally, about what drives the human soul, whether we think religiously/spiritually about these matters or not. So, while “boys will be boys” ideas are readily grafted onto psyche assessments and verbose theoretical pronouncements, those of girls and women are nuanced to integrate elements of social conscious/unconscious forces: societal influences, the oppressive sexist external, not so much an impinging libidinal “drive” from within. For at least fifty years, the foot soldiers of our mental health army, including myself, have been trained to think that problems besetting the feminine are borne of social forces that are inhibitive, not an internal, biological compulsion, or a biological drive supplemented by an internalized social force that privileges rather than inhibits. Fifty years! That’s a long time to consider how things have changed or should change. It’s a long time to recite bullet points, learn the jargon, the right vocabulary, answer the questions correctly on an exam, or write the correct thing in an academic paper, or post on the Psychology Today letters to the editor, or more latterly, their popular blog-spaces, sympathetic, progressive ideas about psychological phenomena.

              Phenomenology is a big word signifying a rabbit-hole topic about why things are as they are, and how we as a collective got here in this state of affairs, as Esther Perel puts it. Bumper stickers, like letters to an editor, are likewise anachronistic, if better for the near-sighted. Blogs seem passe also, buried in the internet miasma. Tik tok and podcast presenters: these are the carriers of messaging these days, not writers. And the message is a formulaic, mini-essayistic delivery, something that will fly off the tongue and serve as a validating selling point—sorry, intervention tool—for a consumer who says they need treatment in order to learn something new about themselves, something they don’t understand, something previously unconscious…ya know, something that will make them feel better (NOT!). What do you want to hear? If you’re a provider, meaning a therapist, a social worker—a sex addiction “specialist”—what are you prepared to say if something rare happens, like a man calling you up for a consultation who claims that his wife is a sex addict, and he is a betrayed, impacted partner? The chestnut phrase coined by advocates, not neutrals, will come to mind. You know how it goes: “his…wait…her? His”, you start again, stammering because your tongue is letting you down, confused. Her behavior has nothing to do with you. Would you think it? Could you say it if you did?

And do we have to lean in further to gender stereotype to find what’s truly axiomatic amid bumper sticker thinking? So, as stated, I’ve heard the catch-phrases a thousand times. I’ve pushed back with something I’ve said maybe a hundred times, and written at least once before in, ya know, that book I mentioned. It’s this: of course, the person engaging in the behavior of taking their sexuality outside of a committed relationship is solely responsible for that likely repetitive behavior. The “acting out” person needs to own that, as SA specialists say, and not blame a partner for having gained weight or becoming conservative in their sexual tastes, or whatever the trope on this part of the debate is. Incidentally, the term “acting out”, widely used now in psychotherapy, was first coined by Sigmund Freud in 1914 as part of a paper that introduced another seminal term and idea, the “compulsion to repeat”. The concept of acting out refers to action (behavior) that unconsciously replaces thought, feeling, and memory. Okay, all that’s already too long for a bumper sticker, and simplistic treatment providers who con people with catch-phrases that make them feel better are reinforcing defenses when they, in effect, say you don’t have to look at your part in this. What’s this mooted “part”? It’s part two of the axiom, the twist if you like:

Addicts, non-addicts, cheaters, co-dependents, wives, husbands, boyfriends and girlfriends, theys and thems–whatever label you’re using to describe yourself: if you’re in a committed relationship then you have and have had a responsibility to talk, listen, and do those activities properly, as in think about what someone is saying to you, as in empathize, suspend for some indeterminate period how you think, even how you see the world. In psychoanalysis, this is termed “taking back projections”–yeah, I know, another catch-phrase. Take a look at your reactions to events, notice your struggle with dichotomies of good versus bad, villain versus hero, perpetrator versus victim, instead of good and bad, the idea that heroes and villains are contained in each of us but often projected onto others. No, once again, I don’t mean you’re responsible for someone else’s affair-seeking behavior or porn use. If you read this and then think, “so, you’re saying it’s my fault”, then you’re illustrating my point about the problem of dichotomizing. I mean that you’re responsible for the many problems in a relationship that you don’t want to deal with.

Try to explore the antecedents of your trauma responses and then notice that “….has nothing to do with you” in the context of an intimate adult relationship is a profoundly wrong suggestion. You think this is blaming, trying to get you to listen, and to think about what you bring to a flawed relationship? If you’re an impacted partner, you think this is “disrespecting” or not understanding your trauma? Okay, do a little research on that topic (trauma, I mean), and I don’t mean re-reading your favorite chapter in a self-help workbook. Actually, do a fair amount of research, act as if this is worth your time. Read American Psychiatric Association criteria for PTSD and find categories pertaining to avoidance of distressing stimuli, what afflicted persons do, repeatedly, to avoid uncomfortable feelings, alternating between states of dissociation, which essentially means emotional cut-off, hyper (meaning excessive) and hypo (under-reactive) states of arousal. Do a Wikipedia search on a man named Sandor Ferenczi, who wrote about trauma, childhood sexual abuse and how that impacts people in adulthood, nearly a hundred years ago. Revitalizing Freud’s once proposed and then renounced Seduction Theory, he paved the way for generations of traumatologists by arguing that episodes of trauma are not self-contained but rather re-enactments of developmental trauma, likely spawned in childhood. You’ll find that addictive states and those of trauma are eerily analogous, at times crossing over in individuals, otherwise blended within a dyad (a couple) in which the pathologies only appear to be segregated. This is probably why afflicted people tend to find and bond with each other, feeling compelled to repeat something forgotten.

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January 26, 2025 · 8:46 am

Strangelove Today

A black screen with a simple piece of script, Dr. Strangelove, loomed over the gathering audience at the Noel Coward Theater in London’s West End. The subtitle of the source work—how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb—had been shorn from the script. A curious omission, as almost every other aspect of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 masterpiece of black comedy had been embellished or tweaked by the modern idiom, but not reduced. It’s a surprise there weren’t more injections of topical humor into this 2024 stage version. One might have thought that a recent election stateside, a revival of Russian enmity over the last decade or so, plus the emergence of oligarchic eccentrics on the stage of social media would have made for a kaleidoscopic bash of re-booted jokes.

              Enter cartoon-faced Steve Coogan, a British comic who has long skipped along the fringes of Hollywood stardom, to don four roles in the play, three of which were once inhabited by the late Peter Sellers, and front the ship of this Dr. Strangelove revival. Coogan is the star, the central pivot in the cast, and its comic center. The behind-the-scenes folks, plus the supporting players are less known to me, worthy as they all are of recognition. Someone woke up one day with a good idea, at least. Strange that it hadn’t happened earlier. A story about accidental nuclear war. A cast of paranoid, oafish narcissists bent on destroying the world. A satire about the folly of creating an absurd militaristic system that is destined towards disaster. Yes, this was the stuff of cold war fantasy from the 50s and early 60s. But why had it taken sixty years to give this a stage treatment? Of course, one answer is that Dr. Strangelove is a great film. How could anyone improve upon such greatness. Who would have the balls to tamper with it? After all, Wicked notwithstanding, no one bothers to remake The Wizard of Oz. The difference is that this is not a movie remake. It’s a play with a few amendments that otherwise retains the themes and plot of the original work. Furthermore, it retains for the most part the narrative structure of the film, which is like a play in so far as it features only a few sets, most of which are indoors, which also makes it conducive to a theatrical adaptation.

              So, is it an improvement, this latter-day remake, designed for the stage but not the big screen? Is it a worthy, next-gen effort at an idea that perhaps each generation should shake a stick at? Yes, is my cautious answer to this latter question at least, though I am still left wondering why it was made and what it really adds to the original work. I ask this last question because other recent revivals—and I’m integrating Wicked into the comment—do indeed build upon an original story. The story and characters of Wicked take everything you might have wondered about The Wizard of Oz and runs with the imagination. The same is true of Peacock’s remake of The Day of the Jackal, which has taken a two-hour film and inflated it to a series, and not a moment is wasted, I’d say. Is the same true of this Strangelove stage-play? Hardly. And it’s not as if the opportunities weren’t there. In the opening scenes, for example, Coogan’s Mandrake character (the first of Sellers’ three from DS 1964) engages in a Marx Brothers-like piece of wordplay with the story’s putative villain, the psychotic General Ripper, who has not accidentally but rather deliberately ordered a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union because—okay, here’s the short version—he blames communists for contaminating the water supply of the western world which has in turn made him sexually impotent. Mandrake learns this in an unfolding conversation with General nutjob after the latter has cut off all communication to the air force base from which he has ordered the nuclear attack. However, Coogan’s Mandrake, wittier and more sarcastic than Sellers’ everyman original, seems aware of the General’s craziness from the get-go. This gives a story-familiar audience a nudge and a wink about themes that implicate dictatorial ramrods the world over, but in my opinion, it compromises the horror of the plot.

              What’s more effective is to suggest the complicity of normal human beings with our broken systems by having the supporting characters act as haplessly and as unknowingly as possible. The point here is that someone had risen to the level of militaristic authority, was positioned if not authorized to launch a nuclear strike, and no one had seemed to notice that he was not all there, so to speak. To be fair, Coogan’s Mandrake is of course helpless in response to the attack that Ripper has launched, and he likewise flounders when another nutjob named Bat Guano shows up to capture the General, only to find that he has committed suicide, which leaves Mandrake and others to desperately figure out how to prevent the nuclear attack thereafter. But prior to this point, Coogan’s character issues quips at the rogue general and attempts to argue with him, which feels unconvincing. Because of Sellers’ more understated performance, which has a forlornness throughout, the dialogue between Mandrake and Ripper is at turns cringe-worthy and poignant. Here, Mandrake is too scared to verbally spar with the general whom he’s only just realized is a psychotic. He knows he can’t reason with him. Only when the air force base is secured by government troops, and the now frightened Ripper becomes fleetingly regretful, does Mandrake transform into an assertive, even compassionate figure—one who attempts to connect with Ripper’s essential brokenness. Only it’s too late.

              An alteration of the plot pertains to a character that Peter Sellers was supposed to play in the original film but didn’t because of a back injury during production. Major King Kong is the pilot of one of the B-52s that has been ordered by Ripper to drop a hydrogen bomb on a Russian target. In the film, this plane is attacked by either Russian or American missiles attempting to thwart the nuclear strike, but not shot down. Instead, it continues on its bomb run, its radio devices damaged. The radio damage is significant because this prevents the reception of a mission recall code that is concurrently being figured out by the Mandrake character after Ripper’s death. Anyway, in the play, the Kong character, now played by Coogan, is a MAGA allusion: like the original character, he is a Southern caricature, but he is not just a dutiful soldier. He is a Ripper parallel: a conspiratorialist fanatic who will not accept his co-pilot’s assertion that a recall code has been issued, which should end the mission. As a result, this plane continues its bomb run, drops the load, with Kong riding a missile down rodeo-style, just as he did in the movie, and the play winds to a conclusion rather like the film does, with the wheelchair-bound Strangelove character lecturing at the Pentagon about surviving a nuclear winter in mine-shafts inhabited by alpha males and subservient women.  

              I felt more neutral about this relatively minor plot change, thinking it gratuitous but not especially damaging to the film’s climax. I suppose I was waiting throughout for a scene that would aim a dig at modern extremists, the culture of misinformation, or AI intrusion. Overall, I was surprised to feel that the more modern version was not as well acted as the original film. I suppose this reflects a prejudice that older films or theatrical productions tend to be cheesier, more melodramatic or heavy-handed in their style. But here, it is the remake, reboot, or whatever this is that disappoints slightly with its more farcical tone, quick pace, and supplemental gags. The extra dialogue fills the gaps that film editing would obscure, no doubt, but there’s little excuse for the feeling of rushed lines, the lack of silence in between words. I am reminded that Strangelove, as a film, was a special breed of artwork: at times farcical, it is nonetheless sober. As a viewer, you’re meant to be stilled in its quiet moments, sit nervously and bite one’s lip. In the opening minutes of the film, as Sellers’ Mandrake realizes what is really happening when he looks down at a radio that is playing civilian broadcasting when it shouldn’t, we’re meant to feel the horror and aloneness of a situation that we’re discovering with him. Maybe the differences in production lie in our less naive observation of this plot and subtext, hence the knowing (or pre-taliating, as the play plays) humor of this Strangelove Today exercise. It’s like a lot of things now, I guess, which is why now is as good as any time for Strangelove to revisit us: we sort of know how we got here, but when the moment of shit happening hits, it’s somehow still a surprise.

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December 22, 2024 · 5:11 pm

Take the bus sweet sixteen

Sweet sixteen. Takes a while to get there, I’d say. Also, it’s not as sexy as it sounds; not the debutante ball it’s chalked up to be. It’s a pinnacle of a problem. Throw up thirteen. Fuck off fourteen. Gross fifteen. Sickness. You hang around teenagers, amid their sniffles, dripping of various fluids, you’ll feel under the weather fairly soon. And minimal conversation. In my teens I was missing because of television, video games that sucked the air from my brain, dulling my imagination. The fingers did the walking, and seemingly the thinking as they flitted about remotes, joysticks, or a keyboard. Now it’s a deft index digit skimming over the small buttons of a cell phone. Eyes scan over the dashing pages. They appear and then disappear like cells of thought dancing about. Get a word in—you know, words—and a head may pop up and recognize external stimuli. Something from within, a hunger, signals that sustenance of an original kind is necessary. An utterance, a cry or a bark burst out with a need. Food is soon engorged. A refrigerator is emptied. Check the front door. Food is often dashed there these days. No dice. The debris of packets, spills, and a stain is all that’s left of the consumption.

Does it peak at sixteen? Does it get better afterwards, this life of or with a teenager? Savage seventeen, asshole eighteen. Nearly done nineteen. It’s not as if they’re not aware of this state of affairs, these diseases they carry. I mean, who likes teenagers? Who says or writes nice things about them? Not me. Read the first paragraph. Adults mock them or wring their hands over them. Grandparents are wary, and strain to relate. Smaller children fear them as if they were monsters lurking in closets. They don’t understand their habits: the curious disarray of belongings, the expanse of ephemera; the clumps of tissue paper, bloodied or rendered sticky, tossed about a toilet. This is why teens start forming an identity, a sense of togetherness, of esprit de corps. The world is against them, or concerned for them, which is vaguely worse. We celebrate their individualism while we lament that very incipience because it intrudes and takes over. We envy the beginning of a prime: sexual confidence is not yet there but it’s coming; athletic prowess, litheness and invincibility are upon them whether they feel it, take advantage of it, or not. Lovingly, we hope this developmental combo of affliction and power will be like one of their illnesses: that it will pass soon and drift into memory, only to be revisited every five years with terrible reunions. The worst of us will not go to those events because they’re too painful. Or, we’ll go, but much later, long after the symptoms of adolescence have abated and others’ memory of our teenage selves has dwindled.

This was true in my case. Yes, I’m not a teenager. Not anymore. Not chronologically. It’s behind me. I’m in recovery now. Or it’s in disguise, hiding like a stash of dirty magazines. Magazines? What are those, asks a contemporary teen. Don’t get me wrong. I have warm feelings towards teenagers, the few that I know, that let me get to know them. They’re both terrible and wonderful, like I was. They compel my interest while they alienate and push away. Some of them plunder and gambol about– rolling objects ever at risk of knocking down the household furniture. When they rest, they seem immovable, forgetful, unrousable. An analyst once said to me that teens are the way they are because they are mimicking the ill or absent objects they are looking to rouse. By object he meant parent. Unconsciously, analysts use the word object to signify how parents start to feel as parents. Infants pull at, chew, or cling to their parents. They drape their limbs over their heads, hug knees and ankles. They grab and scratch, give you a cold at least once per financial quarter. Parenting a small child is a workout of chasing and wrestling, interspersed with household chores, seized naps, a comradely debriefing with a weary co-parent. The teen years grant a reprieve in the form of distance. The onset of puberty, the libidinal surge, generates space and tension: privacy and basic needs do battle, forcing outbursts that juxtapose rejection and appeal. Help. Guidance. Give. Then kindly fuck off.

You’d think they’d want this stage of life to be over; that they’d want to move on. But they linger, don’t they: teenagers. The affliction bleeds into the twenties, and for some, beyond. Certain habits, the masturbatory, the dissociative, solipsistic, drifting whimsy doesn’t seem to leave. We don’t want this period of indulgence blended with insecurity to go. It’s in the dishes left by the sink; the T-shirt spread over the washing machine, left for someone else to deal with. It’s in the stolid gaze, the hapless shrug that you receive when you ask after the thoughts that linked to these actions. Were there thoughts, you wonder? Was there shame, guilt, or rather conscience, ethics, righteousness: all the qualities that magically appear when the tables are turned, a divide is crossed. One day the adolescent finishes school, gets a job, assumes responsibility and has to lead, guide, or soothe another being. As a parent, you thought to give them a head start by getting a pet, or having a second child. Feed it, walk it, babysit them, etc. That was the point, you thought.

At some point, you thought to foster independence for your own good; to take a break, thinking a massive stage of the parenting job was done. Go online, sign up for Indeed. Download that App that will get you a credit card. Get a reference, network. Find out what a deductible means. These are your decreasingly patient instructions. Take a moment. No, take several. Take years, actually. Think back to when you were a teen, or just the last time a stage of life was coming to an end, forcing you to change. Routines stopped or altered. Someone or thing modifies a system, changes the rules, or the assumptions underlying the rules. Some of those teenagers are growing up and assuming authority because they are alright as teens. They’re polite to strangers, reflective when asked questions that call for meaning. That’s amazing, you think, when you first observe or hear of this–when you get those lovely yet irritating compliments from other adults about your kids. They (the kids) are still rebelling, actually, only it’s not called that when you’re in charge and you’re organized and well-spoken; when you’re empowered and separate from the enmeshed family tree. See, they only seem empowered, or entitled if you prefer, when they’re lounging on your dime, playing the music loud, drowning out your life. It feels not quite as threatening when they’re out and about, filling the sidewalks in packs, in gaggles of giggling, mutually-interrupting, shouting groups. Give them access to a car and this gets worse. Their windows are down and the heavy bass sounds of rap coupled with raucous singing is on public display. Not everyone in the pack is like this. On the sidewalk is a couple engrossed in an intimate moment. Hands in his pockets, a reticent boy is making an effort in the dawn of an aged ritual: he is solicitous and gentle. He is sweet, the accompanying girl will think. Sweet sixteen. Keeping his hands to himself, his head down, his glances glancing, he is not yet the boorish oaf he may soon appear to be. And the prim girl is likewise demure and self-effacing, not yet the disdainful, prickly woman she may “grow up” to become. Twenty years from now they’ll have a teenage boy or girl, or someone who will identify as neither: someone who will nonetheless expect basics of food and shelter, then games and fun; then free time and space to exercise free will, often with things that are not free. They cost money because of the rules that previous generations made. Yes, you might say to the requests that demand an easier passage through the world you made and they didn’t. Yes, you will help with some things, the things you know. Well, not all things. No, I won’t give you a ride, you’ll say, alluding to an old-fashioned artifact you might have used. Take the bus.

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