The Controversy in Treating Partners of Sex Addicts

In “From Victimhood to Victorhood” (published in the May/June 2015 issue of The Therapist), Alex Katehakis writes that a “major shift has occurred in treating partners of sex addicts”. The shift she describes is towards the Relational Trauma (RT) Model, in which practitioners emphasize that partners’ relational bonds are damaged by betrayal, as precipitated by the discovery of sexual acting out — not a historical and ongoing pattern of destructive or self-defeating behavior by non-acting out partners, as implied by the so-called co-addict model, previously espoused by writers like Stephanie Carnes and Claudia Black. In the RT approach, practitioners eschew the implication that partners contribute significantly to an addiction by an elaborate, conscious or unconscious pattern of enabling. Such suggestions are misplaced, if sometimes accurate, assert proponents of the RT Model, while their interventions are by contrast comforting and affirming, emphasizing the depth of betrayal by a perpetrating partner. The champions of this position are The Association for Partners of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialists (or APSATS). Their members, as well as those of the hegemonic Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT) network refer to “sex addiction induced trauma” as a specified subset of a PTSD-like condition. PTSD-like because while discovery of sex addiction has been deemed a life altering event and has even been demonstrated to be a traumatic event for partners, accord...
Source: Psych Central - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Addictions Psychotherapy PTSD Relationships & Love Sexuality Substance Abuse Trauma Addiction Recovery co-addict model co-addiction Codependency Enabling Hypervigilance Impulsive Behavior Infidelity love addiction lying r Source Type: news