Sometimes the trivial is annoying enough where it warrants comment. Within the context of the disclaimer, a few observations about ex-ESPN baseball analyst Steve Phillips and his purported “sex addiction.”
What is sexual addiction? According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders, sex addiction is “distress about a pattern of repeated sexual relationships involving a succession of lovers who are experienced by the individual only as things to be used.” It also involves “compulsive searching for multiple partners, compulsive fixation on an unattainable partner, compulsive masturbation, compulsive love relationships and compulsive sexuality in a relationship.”
Disclaimer number two: I take the therapeutic community and their effort to characterize virtually every questionable aspect of human behavior as a “disorder” with one huge grain of salt. I consider much of their approach to be a direct outgrowth of secularism, which has transformed “good and evil” into “well and unwell,” primarily for the purpose of removing a higher power, aka God, from the value judgement equation.
In their world, Steve Phillips cannot simply be an unethical horndog in a position of power exploiting fame and fortune to hit on women. He must be “sick,” and so he’s headed for “rehab.” According to the NY Post, Phillips is headed to a “high-priced facility–in a mystery location–that specializes in the sex-addiction treatment.”
I’ll bet.
One of the oldest phrases regarding the true motives behind certain behavior is “follow the money.” If I made a nickel off every new “disorder” the therapeutic community has discovered–and provided treatment for–in the last two decades, I could be hobnobbing with the Bill Gates crowd.
And it’s only going to get worse. What person would rather hear that they’re bad instead of sick? What modern-day American would prefer to own his reckless behavior than have it excused as something “beyond his control?”
How effective is the treatment for sexual addiction? This is the second time around for Mr. Phillips, whose first trip to the couch in 1998 apparently didn’t take. But why should it? “Psychological absolution”–being well instead of good–allows for the complete removal of guilt and stigma attached to lousy behavior. Phillips went from being the well-paid GM of the Mets during his first rehab to being the well-paid analyst for ESPN until his latest dust-up. No doubt when he graduates from his stint in therapy he will once again latch on to yet another high-paying gig.
All will be forgiven. Or, once good and bad are removed from the equation, is forgiven the wrong word? Perhaps “rehabilitated” is more accurate.
Unless I’m missing something, virtually every human being alive is, or has been, a sexual addict. They don’t call it puberty for nothing. So what separates the true addict from the rest of us? Self-control. Where did self-control come from? It sure as hell didn’t come from secular humanism’s love affair with moral relativity, or a manual of psychological disorders.
Maybe “old fashioned” religion still has a place in modern-day America.
atahlert@comcast.net
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