‘What are you looking for?’: a psychoanalytically oriented qualitative study of men’s compulsive use of internet pornography

Abstract

Internet pornography use is an extremely widespread human engagement. A minority of viewers finds it compelling and experience distress and/or functional impairment due to their use. There is a tension in how internet pornography is considered culturally; privately, it is approached and engaged with, publicly it is distanced from and rejected. Empirical research into this phenomenon has tended to shy away from exploring the underlying elements inherent in engaging with pornography online, perhaps mirroring this cultural tension. This study used a psychoanalytically oriented multi-interview method and analysis, with five men, to explore the intrapsychic dynamics underpinning their compulsive use of internet pornography. Three themes emerged from this data: ‘searching for something’, ‘holding it all in and then just explode’, and ‘two separate personas’. Emergent themes were linked to psychoanalytic concepts including Laplanche’s concept of the enigmatic signifier and the Kleinian concepts of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions. Clinical implications for working with compulsive users of internet pornography and pathways for future research are discussed.