Sex and the Single Psychologist

Undeterred by the criticism elicited by his first foray into Internet surveys, Cooper has continued to conduct new ones with MSNBC and with a popular Swedish Web site. The later studies have produced more nuanced findings, he says. For example, they acknowledge that someone who engages in 11 or more hours of online sexual activity related to health education is not a cybersex compulsive. But overall, he says, the newer results have corroborated his first MSNBC study.

Though his cybersex-positive messages don't always make the airwaves, Cooper says he continues to work with reporters because he sees it as his responsibility as a mental health professional.

"Clearly, education is one reason [for the media work]," Cooper says. "As a psychologist, you're supposed to be helping people, and I can either help one person in my office or I can help a million people [through the press]. It's a different kind of help, but they're both helpful."

"He's tried to talk about [Internet sexuality] in a way that is ... catchy but not titillating," adds Cooper's ex-wife, Georgie Keyssner, who watched as his career blossomed in the late '90s after the MSNBC survey (they were amicably divorced in 2001). "If you don't get a soundbite out of it, then you're not heard. He's not promoting it; he wants to discuss it, to make people aware that there are issues around it."

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At precisely 8:30 a.m., the always-punctual Cooper steps to the front of the San Francisco hotel conference room. He starts his presentation by acknowledging the white elephant in the room -- the long-standing professional disagreement over the problem he'll spend the day discussing.

"I'll be using the terms 'online sexual compulsivity' and 'sexual acting out,'" he tells the audience. "As this field develops, it's important to develop a consistent lexicon. ... There are debates about names and definitions in the field that are beyond the scope of what we're talking about today."

Then he plugs his book. "And if you buy it today, we'll throw in a blender," he jokes.

Throughout his speech, he avoids using the word "addiction," though he does reference the work and treatment philosophy of Dr. Patrick Carnes, the controversial figure who coined the term "sex addiction" in the 1980s. The seminar itself is titled "Cybersex Addictions: How to Identify and Treat the Affects of Aberrant Online Sexual Pursuits."

"I'm mixed about [the debate]," Cooper tells me later. "I think people kind of have an association with 'sex addiction,' but I don't think it's that accurate and I think it's a little simplistic. So, in professional meetings I usually say that. If I do an interview and they want to use the term 'sexual addiction,' I may make a comment about it, but I'm willing to do it because, I mean ... I know they're not going to take 300 words to explain the finer point."

Cooper, like many others in the field, prefers the term "sexual compulsivity." "A compulsion is more that you're driven by psychological needs, not a physiological dependence on it," Cooper says. "For me, I have a position, I believe in my position, it's the most informed position that I can have."

Certainly, the debate runs deep within the professional community, and Cooper is by no means considered an extremist on the subject. "[Professionals in the field] can't seem to arrive at a consensus as to what to call this clinical syndrome," says Dr. Eli Coleman, director of the human sexuality program at the University of Minnesota Medical School and a past president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. "There is a problem with excessive and compulsive and impulsive sexual behavior. But 'sexual addiction' is a term that has caught on mostly in the media, and has not been greeted very well in the scientific community or the psychiatric community. The dangers are in oversimplifying a complex phenomenon. 'Sex addiction' is an unfortunate and imprecise term which can be very misleading to understanding the source of the problem, and can create a potential misdirection of treatment."

Still others warn that the concept of addictive sexual behavior -- regardless of whether it's called an "addiction" or a "compulsion" -- is a sex-negative perspective. The actual level of sexual danger has been inflated in the media, in response to the work of people like Carnes and Cooper.

"My issue with 'sex addiction' is that it pathologizes what, in many cases, are perfectly valid and helpful activities," says Dr. Marty Klein, an outspoken Palo Alto-based opponent of the sex addiction model who publishes frequently on sexuality. "And when it does address activities that are not healthy, it does it in a way that is based on certain assumptions about sexuality that I don't think are helpful.