Bisexual Sex Addicts: A Typical Story

Here is a good clinical example by another therapist of how non-gay men who have sex with men can be the result of sexual addiction and be driven by father hunger.

The author is Jerry Goodman. I know him through SASH (Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health) which is an organization for sexual addiction and compulsivity.

Jerry has been an LCSW (Licensed Certified Social Worker) psychotherapist for approximately 30 years, the last 18 of which he has specialized in treating male sex addicts. In the early 90’s, with his wife, Margaret, he developed the Counseling Affiliates Sexual Addiction Treatment Program in Houston. In 1991 Jerry took one of Patrick Carnes' early sexual addition training intensives for therapists and continued to follow Carnes’ literature, lectures, workshops and personal counsel. Finally when professional certification became available, he obtained the Certified Sex Addiction Therapist certification (CSAT) in 2001. The following year he received the Supervisor/Consultant Certification for assisting other therapists in obtaining the CSAT. Jerry draws not only on his years of training and professional experience but also on his years of personal recovery

Sex addiction help
Houston Counseling Affiliates
2620 Fountainview, Ste. 250
Houston, TX 77057


Here is a case example that involves MSM.

A Story about Bisexual Sexual Addiction

The following are excerpts:

It was unanimously decided that he was not a repressed homosexual but that he
had long been addicted to sexualized re-enactment of his childhood trauma with
his father which had prevented him from completing some of his psychic
development, leaving him in doubt of his masculinity. This was part of the
anxiety and inner turmoil that he had acted out over and over. He was told that
the neurologically programmed addictive response would probably stay with him
but that with the willingness to work a strong recovery program and to do some
significant psychological work, he would be able to control the addiction rather
than the addiction controlling him, allowing him to have the life he and Laura
wanted. Laura also learned that she needed to participate in a recovery program
and to do psychological work to help her with the effects Manuel’s problem had
had on her and to resolve her own issues which she learned had played a part in
unconsciously attracting her to Manuel.

Later in the article the therapist writes:

"These patterns are clear evidence of sexual addiction despite the unavoidable
presence of cultural influence which probably accounted for the sexual identity
doubt expressed to Carlos when he said he had wondered if he was gay. Ultimately
the professional treatment ruled out repressed homosexuality, and even prior to
that there was a good indication of a heterosexual identity in that he felt
genuine love, which could be assumed included romantic and sexual love, for
Laura."

And finally he ends with this:

No doubt Manuel will have an attraction to males his whole life that was set in
motion as a child by the rejection and criticism from his father. In a sense the
rejection by his primary masculine role model prevented him from developing a
secure concept of himself as male. Therefore, the attraction to males probably
has an element of unconscious searching for unfulfilled fathering and
symbolically taking into his psyche the masculinity he had partially distanced
himself from in childhood in reaction to his father's harshness. This “quest,”
like all other patterns of experience that occurred in his psychological
development were neurologically programmed as part of his psychic “map” or
template, and therefore a permanent part of him.

For the entire case example click here