Nymphomaniac , the new film by Lars von Trier , recounts the extreme, prolific, and at times risky sexual history of a woman named Joe, a self-proclaimed nymphomaniac. As someone who has, at times, reveled in my high sexual appetite, and at other times struggled with it, while watching, I feltβas one does with great films about the human conditionβdeeply connected to Joe, her pleasures, guilt and compulsions albeit, to a lesser degree.
To be born with a forbidden sexuality is agonizing. This idea of dark, overwhelming sexuality has recently become a hot topic in mainstream cultureβfrom a string of Hollywood films broaching the subject to various celebrities checking into sex rehab. At what point does one go from just being really horny to having a legitimate problem? I welcome all alternate labelsβhorny, adventurous, nympho, slutty, etc.
I remember at fifteen feeling that my virginity was like a disease that needed to be cured, impeding my ability to move forward with my intended sexual exploration. But at seventeen, after getting caught spending the night with a year-old apple farmer, my parents sent me to a Catholic therapist.
It was the first time someone tried to convince me that my behavior was problematic. In my rebellious teenage mind, however, I thought the concept of sex as a weapon sounded really cool. As if it was the faculty of a sexual superhero or something. Afterward, it becomes a kid-in-a-candy-store situation. For some, it can be hard to maintain control. A lack of control is certainly a prevalent theme in the recent depictions of sex addiction in mainstream media. And, in a recent episode of Girls , Adam tells Hannah that he once saw casual sex as a way to keep him from drinking.
And actually, nymphomania is a largely outdated term. However, in , sex addiction was rejected once more for inclusion in the DSM-5 aka the bible of mental health disorders, periodically updated by the American Psychiatric Association due to a lack of substantial scientific evidence that one can actually be addicted to sex.
