Steve Phillips – Sex Addict

(CBS/AP) Former ESPN baseball analyst Steve Phillips had to play hard ball when it came to confronting his actions, which he says in a TV interview were driven by sex addiction.

Before the Tiger Woods scandal broke last fall, the former New York Mets general manager was thrust into the spotlight when he admitted to having an affair with 22-year-old Brooke Hundley, a production assistant at the cable network.

Since then, he was fired by ESPN and later checked himself into the Gentle Path sex addiction program at the same Mississippi treatment center that is said to have just finished treating Woods, but is sex rehab becoming a trend to justify bad judgment and get off the hook or is it legit?

This is a a question that at first glance seems like it could be a legitimate path for someone like Steve Phillips or Tiger Woods to take to get their lives in order.  But, before making a determination, I wanted to see what exactly is sex addiction.

Micheal Herkhov, PhD, writes:

The National Council on Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity has defined sexual addiction as “engaging in persistent and escalating patterns of sexual behavior acted out despite increasing negative consequences to self and others.” In other words, a sex addict will continue to engage in certain sexual behaviors despite facing potential health risks, financial problems, shattered relationships or even arrest.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders, Volume Four describes sex addiction, under the category “Sexual Disorders Not Otherwise Specified,” as “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.” According to the manual, sex addiction also involves “compulsive searching for multiple partners, compulsive fixation on an unattainable partner, compulsive masturbation, compulsive love relationships and compulsive sexuality in a relationship.”

This seems to be pretty clear – about as clear as mud. It’s someone who is obsessed with sex and has sexual compulsions, which I think probably defines a whole helluva lot of people who are not addicts.  I hate to be glib about such a serious topic, but I simply don’t understand how someone could cure themselves of this affliction.  If people have addictions, generally the cure is to quit doing it.  Um…I don’t think that’s going to happen with sex.

I looked into it further, I went to Psychology Today and found an article written by Lennard Davis, a Guggenheim Fellow and a Professor in the College of Applied Health Sciences, the College of Medicine, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences where he teaches disability studies, literature, theory, and the intersection between science, medicine, technology and culture.  In it he states (emphasis added by me):

In order know if a behavior is obsessive or excessive, you have to come up with what normal sex might look like. There is a long and hopeless history of specialists trying to establish those norms-from Victorian ideas about the dangers of masturbation and promiscuity to statistical analyses by Masters and Johnson to a late 20th century notion that anything between consenting adults is normal. But throughout, in repressive or progressive times, people have tried, and failed, to come up with what would be sexually normal-normal in terms of frequency, object of desire, and intensity.

Somewhere in the post-sixties world, sex addiction was invented. The founders of the idea were called, and still are, Sex and Love Anonymous. For them sex addiction is a “progressive illness” that cannot be cured but only be arrested. Using the language of Alcoholics Anonymous they want to remain sexually “sober.” If you read through their forty questions for self-analysis, you’ll find it hard to understand where the line is drawn between the cultural goal of being in love and having a lot of sex and the medical goal of cure or 12-step aim of sobriety.

OK.  So, it’s not really a medical condition according to the esteemed professor.  More like a made up thing.  Now why would someone make up something like that?  I wonder.

Professor Davis answers that question:

The Meadows Rehab, where David Duchovny got sexually sober, is the end result of a popular movement to define and treat sex addiction. Its senior fellows are listed as: Pia Mellody, author of Facing Love Addiction and Breaking Free, Claudia Black, author of It will Never Happen to Me and Changing Course, and Patrick Carnes, author of Out of the Shadows and The Betrayal Bond. None of them are medical doctors but what they all share in common is that they wrote best-selling books on addiction, sex addiction, and co-dependency. In other words, sex addiction was invented by a self-help group aided by popular books. It is trying now to move over into a medical condition.

OK. Now it’s clearer.  It’s a made up thing so that people can sell books and open up expensive facilities. To be fair, the Meadows Rehab, in addition to treating sex addicts, also treats other addictions, such as drug, alcohol and gambling, from which people do get sober.

So, coming back to Steve Phillips and his problems.  Back in 2003, he was charged with sexual harassment when he was the Mets’ GM, took a leave of absence, and settled out of court.  More recently, he had an affair with a production assistant, which led his wife to file for divorce and with him being fired by the world wide leader ESPN.

I know I’m going out on a limb here…I believe that there are people in this world who take advantage of their positions and use their power and influence to have sex. And it’s a shame that instead of just admitting that he’s a serial womanizer, people pond scum like Steve Phillips take a legitimate treatment solely to help them look good on the Today Show. This in turn, makes them look good in the public eye, which will help him get another high profile job.

Can you guess what happens next?  I’m not a betting man, but he will have a setback which will lead to more tearful TV appearances for self-serving apologies, and then back for another 6 week vacation stint at the rehab center.

Sorry, I’m not buying it.