Investigating Features of Hypersexuality and the "Sexhaviour Cycle of Hypersexuality" to Inform Clinical Research, Assessment, Treatment, and Common Understanding

Abstract

<p>Hypersexuality refers to a repetitive pattern of sexual urges, sexual fantasies, and sexual behaviours that some people experience are problematic to control and leads to clinically significant personal distress or impairment. A critical review of the extant literature was undertaken by the PhD candidate and published as a Target Article in the <em>Archives of Sexual Behavior</em>. The literature review found that multiple theoretical conceptualisations, etiologies, and features differentially relate to hypersexuality. Therefore, the "<em>sexhaviour cycle of hypersexuality</em>" was conceptualised by the candidate in an attempt to develop a parsimonious model that explains the neuropsychology and maintenance cycle of hypersexuality, at least for a collective of presentations.</p><p> The sexhaviour cycle suggests that human sexual behaviour is cyclically represented by four distinct and sequential stages described as sexual urge, sexual behaviour, sexual satiation, and post-sexual satiation. When sexual urges occur, a person's sexual arousal increases unless sexual urges are resisted, suppressed, or dissipated because of daily circumstances or inhibition disrupts sexual arousal. It is also suggested that sexual urges and behaviours are driven by a pattern of sexual arousal, the intensity and frequency of which is unique to the individual and associated with varying levels of impulsivity (see Figure 1).</p><p> In contrast, the sexhaviour cycle when applied to understanding hypersexuality, conceptualises that some individuals' experience frequent and intense sexual arousal that may temporarily and adversely impact cognitive processing (cognitive abeyance) and explain a repeated pattern of psychological distress when interpreting one's sexual behaviour (sexual incongruence; see Figure 2).</p>