Customer Reviews

The Sex Addiction Workbook: Proven Strategies to Help You Regain Control of Your Life (New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am a professor of clinical psychology with over 150 publications primarily on some aspects of sexual offending and 15 years experience working with sexual offenders. I have also edited several books and authored two others on the explanation, assessment, and treatment of sexual offenders. In my view this is an outstanding publication which manages to combine excellent scholarship with sound practical advice for individuals with sexual disorders. It is written in a clear and straight forward manner and I think will engage offenders in the process of learning to manage their destructive actions and turning their lives around. It should prove useful as an adjunct resource for therapists and also provide individuals reluctant to seek therapy with some valuable strategies for controlling their sexually deviant behavior. This is an excellent addition to the treatment literature.

Tony Ward, PhD, DipClinPsyc

This book offers guidance for individuals who struggle with an addiction to sex. It is written in a practical, often entertaining, and always enlightening way. It can be used on its own or in conjunction with psychotherapy. I wish I had had this book in the past as an adjunct to conducting psychotherapy with my patients who have had such problems. I will be sure to use it with patients in the future.

As a pastoral counselor I found this book useful in getting in touch with core basics and how to methodically move through them. I have now used this book with 2 clients and have purchased the last one for a good friend who is struggling with his addictions to pornography. The authors show good insight into the realm of sex addiction and how to pull through it.

Any book that makes a spurious claim on its cover is off to a bad start. This one claims to be "The only scientifically supported treatment method for addicts." That claim is not supported by anything in the book. Sources and studies are generally not cited, though the authors do proudly point out that "most" people who used the book found it "helpful." Hardly scientific.

The text feels as if it were written by a college freshman trying to pad a term paper. It repeats itself and wastes a lot of paper and ink with platitudes like "If others can, you can too."

The authors seem to think addiction, which is a complex physiological condition, can be treated simply. Willpower, discipline and shame are emphasized. There's a great deal of blame placed on the porn industry. Recommendations are simplistic, e.g. Disconnect your computer if you use Internet porn, and don't drive down streets where prostitutes hang out.

About every other page, the authors remind you that if you don't stop it you'll go to jail or get AIDS.

Finally, this book seems to be directed at heterosexual males who are sexual predators to one degree or another. There's a lot of talk about molestation and forcing one's partner into rough sex acts. The authors spend at least half their energy trying to convince the reader that he is definitely a sex addict.

This might be useful for sexual predators in denial. But for anybody who acknowledges they have a problem with sex addiction or sexually compulsive behavior, this book offers almost nothing.

I, as a therapist who works with folks who have sexual addictions, have found this book to be a good resource to supplement the work we do together in sessions. It is well written and seems to address the issues in a gentle manner, allowing clients to work at a comfortable pace.
Lorraine LaBarre, LCSW
New London, CT

This workbook is practical and empirically supported. Its exercises are clear and cognitively based and includes a survey to measure the degree of sex addiction. I use it in my work with patients in psychotherapy.

Interesting and informative book for those working with clients and or patients that have sexual addictions. However, this book could have been improved by having a section or a chapter regarding Family Counseling and or Therapy for service providers working with individuals with sexual addictions.

Nestor R. Mantilla

Great tool for discovering your level of addiction and great exercises to help you reach a solution. Life-changing. Highly recommended.

I felt that this book was very simplistic in its explanations and its exercises. That's not to say that sometimes the simple exercises aren't the hardest, but rather I could've and really have thought of these things before. It also was completely centered on the male experience of sex addiction. All of the case stories were about men and most of the examples of behaviors/thinking were very male oriented (ex. going to strip clubs, hiring prostitutes, thinking that women want to be dominated) and completely ignored the particular way that women experience sex addiction. Resources that I've found to be more powerful and insightful: the basic text for SLAA (Sex & Love Addicts Anonymous) and "Women, Sex, & Addiction" by Charlotte Kasl. This last text is the only one I've ever seen that adequately deals with the female experience.