When Desire Devours Itself
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Sexual obsession represents one of the most complex and still largely misunderstood clinical territories in contemporary sexology. It is not simply a matter of intense desire or repetitive behavior: sexual obsession is a condition in which sexuality, rather than being a space of pleasure and connection, becomes a psychic prison. In this inaugural article of “Clinical Psychosexology”, we explore the clinical phenomenology of sexual obsession, its neurobiological substrates, the necessary distinction from sexual addiction and hypersexuality, and its rootedness in the patient’s deepest identity structures. The goal is not to pathologize desire, but to offer the clinical and lay reader a more accurate map of a terrain that is frequently misread.
Author: Mappa, Francesco
Institution: Regione Puglia
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7148499214
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