Customer Reviews

In the Shadows of the Net: Breaking Free of Compulsive Online Sexual Behavior

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

very thorough treatment of cybersex and internet porn addiction with psychological & emotional etiology -- discusses the cunning, baffling, powerful addiction of the internet & its ease of access to pornographic sites & cybersex chat rooms -- carries through to the financial & interpersonal & legal expenses that may result from this addiction as well as destroyed families & lost employment

There is a reason Tiger Woods went to Patrick Carnes when he needed rehabilitation for his sexual addiction. This is a profession work with amazing personal stories by addicts. Having been to Gentle Path myself I can vouch that his approach really works. Head and Shoulders above the competition by a professional with 30 years of experience working with sex addicts and sexaholics.

I want to point out an important mistake in this book. On pages 15-16 the authors refer to a study by Al Cooper in which 9,265 Internet users admitted their use of the Internet for sexual pursuits. 6% of these users were shown to be compulsive viewers of sexual material. Later, the authors claim that 6% of ALL Internet users are compulsive viewers of sexual material: "6% of 148 million" people in the U.S. that use the Internet view pornography compulsively. They forget that in Cooper's study, 6% of the people who ADMITTED USING THE INTERNET FOR SEXUAL PURSUITS were compulsive, NOT 6% of EVERYONE who uses the Internet.

The numbers for porn addiction is high, but not that high.

Besides this error, the book is fine overall.

If you
know someone who is addicted to sex or porn this is a great way to get some idea of what IS going on in their head. It is NOT a cure all book. It explains the flawed thinking that can occur when a person becomes literally as addicted to sex/porn as, say, Tiger Woods.

The book gave me and my boyfriend a better understanding of his behavior. Why he couldn't stop the secret dating, and the internet e-mails and porn. Fantasizing about sexual situations, whether the grass was greener somewhere other than with the life he knew.

For me it was very painful to find about his affairs, for him it was something which brought him a lot of shame and misery because he saw how much it hurt me. We are still working through the pain and realizing that it takes a lot of work on an ongoing basis to stay free from the temptations which are so easily available the internet and have the power to destroy a person's life. I highly recommend this book I was able to understand the reason of his compulsive behavior and he understood that he was a sex addict that need it help.

I ordered this book to help some of my clients struggling with internet porn addiction and was quite disappointed that there was so much focus on child molesters. None of my clients fit that profile and were turned off by Chapter 3.
My other criticism is that the book seemed a bit choppy and cobbled together. It felt like different chapters were written by the three different authors and then cut and pasted together.
I love and respect Patrick Carnes' pioneer work in the field of sexual addition treatment which made this book even more disappointing.
Having said all that, there were many positive things about the book. The questionaires are useful and overall, the rest of the content was spot on.

Excellent book for helping internet sex addicts. Easy to read, easy to understand. Assessment tool in the book is very helpful. I recommend highly.

Ensnarled by cybersex? How to release yourself from problematic online sexual behavior. This book shines a hopeful light on the dark side of cyberspace. It is very powerful & comes at a time when there is great need for understanding & healing of cybersex addictions.

A lot of the material comes from another book by Carnes, Out of the Shadows, which is really good.

This book is shows how destructive porn addiction can be. This book does not focus on the addictive nature of lust. 12 step programs are reccomended, but Sexaholics Anonymous is left out. Carnes does not believe in abstinence from lust. He likes the idea of a "healthier" sexuality. There is no mention of how men feed their lust through the eyes, and that online porn is just one source of feeding the addiction. Addicts have to starve their eyes of the drug that feeds the addiction. Then We have to work on our thought life, and not allow lust thoughts to gain ground in our conciousness. This book does not go that deep, because that is not how Carnes deals with lust in any of his books. Just remember,"half measures availed us nothing."