When interiority is annulled: The healing of psychic pain, trauma and deprivation in a case of compulsion to child pornography

Abstract

ABSTRACT The author describes the prevalence of compulsion to child pornography and notes the sparsity of psychoanalytic engagement with the phenomenon. The author describes his work in a psychoanalytic treatment with a man plagued by a compulsion to child pornography and illustrates the internal dynamics of unmetabolized trauma, identifications and erasure. At the center of the healing process is the patient’s painful recognition that the compulsion embodies a destruction of self and that he is identified with both the child victim and the perpetrators in the pornographic scenarios. The phases of the treatment are described and the author recommends an unobtrusive companioning psychoanalytic approach.