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A Jungian Interpretation of Sexual Addiction: A Case Study of Mid-Life Crisis
This study presents a single case of an adult middle-class male, M., whom I saw professionally as a psychotherapist in an Israeli mental health community service center. He briefly used cyberporn sites, moved to cybersex sites and rapidly precipitated into hyper-activity (matching criteria for addiction) to actual sexual encounters with call girls advertising on websites. In its discussion, this article proposes a Jungian approach to the interpretation of the case study of M. In particular it uses two central concepts in Jungian theory: the meaning of the second half of life, and the archetype of the “shadow.” It is shown that this apparent case of mid-life depression in fact concealed “possession” of raw repressed material of the shadow that ultimately led to sexual acting out and the abrupt termination of therapy.
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