Hypersexuality

Hypersexuality is a proposed medical condition said to cause unwanted or excessive sexual arousal, causing people to engage in or think about sexual activity to a point of distress or impairment. Whether it should be a clinical diagnosis used by mental healthcare professionals is controversial. The terms nymphomania and satyriasis have historically been used to describe this condition in women and men, respectively.

Hypersexuality may be a primary condition, or the symptom of other medical conditions, such as Klüver–Bucy syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, brain injury, and dementia. Hypersexuality may also be a side effect of medication, such as dopaminergic drugs used to treat Parkinson's disease. Frontal lesions caused by brain injury, strokes, and frontal lobotomy are thought to cause hypersexuality in individuals who have suffered these events. Clinicians have yet to reach a consensus over how best to describe hypersexuality as a primary condition, or the suitability of describing such behaviors and impulses as a separate pathology.

Hypersexual behaviors are viewed by clinicians and therapists as a type of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) or obsessive–compulsive spectrum disorder, an addiction, or an impulse-control disorder. A number of authors do not acknowledge such a pathology, and instead assert that the condition merely reflects a cultural dislike of exceptional sexual behavior.

Consistent with having no consensus over what causes hypersexuality, authors have used many different labels to refer to it, sometimes interchangeably, but often depending on which theory they favor or which specific behavior they have studied or researched; related or obsolete terms include compulsive masturbation, compulsive sexual behavior, cybersex addiction, erotomania, excessive sexual drive, hyperphilia, hypersexual disorder, problematic hypersexuality, sexual addiction, sexual compulsivity, sexual dependency, sexual impulsivity, and paraphilia-related disorder.