The Straight Dope is a very reliable source, IMO, and here's their take on so-called sexual addiction:
Quote:
Evolving views of nymphomania were reflected in the successive editions of the American Psychiatric Association's official guide to madness, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Nymphomania was listed as a "sexual deviation" in the first DSM, published in 1951; by DSM-III (1980) it had become a "psychosexual disorder," albeit a vaguely defined one. Sensing the winds of change, or maybe just having watched a few talk shows, the editors of DSM-III-R (revised third edition, 1987) dropped nymphomania and its equally quaint male counterpart, Don Juanism, and replaced them with "distress about a pattern of repeated sexual conquests or other forms of nonparaphilic [nondeviant] sexual addiction." In DSM-IV (1994) even sexual addiction was abandoned, perhaps because the non-gender-specific nature of the term laid bare the speciousness of the whole project: If men as well as women can be sex addicts, and if many male victims (Bill Clinton, Joe Namath) are successful, admired, and largely unrepentant, it seems stupid to characterize as an illness what a lot of people would consider an accomplishment.
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The emphasis is mine, not the original text. DSM is the official manual for mental disorders and diseases, it's like the psychiatrist and psychologist bible. I disagree and think it's very not real and a social creation to explain people who they view as "too" sexually active.