Sexual addiction: insights from psychoanalysis and functional neuroimaging

Vincent Estellon (1) , Harold Mouras (2, 3)

1 EPSYLON - Dynamique des capacités humaines et des conduites de santé
2 ANIM - Action-Neuroimagerie-Modelisation
3 LNFP - Laboratoire de Neurosciences Fonctionnelles et Pathologies - UR UPJV 4559

Sexual motivation is a fundamental behavior in human. For a long time, this behavior has been somehow ignored from psychological and neuroscientific research. In this article - reflecting the collaboration of a clinical psychologist and a neuroscientist - we show that in the current period, sexual affiliation is one of the most promising affiliation context to articulate a debate, a dialog and convergence points between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Recent data on healthy sexual behavior and its compulsive variant are discussed under the prism of neuroscience and psychoanalysis.

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Vincent Estellon, Harold Mouras. Sexual addiction: insights from psychoanalysis and functional neuroimaging. Socioaffective Neuroscience and Psychology, 2012, 2 (1), ⟨10.3402/snp.v2i0.11814⟩. ⟨hal-03649709⟩