Dependence upon or a psychological addiction to pornography portrayed by compulsive thinking, reading, and viewing pornography and sexual themes to the disadvantage of other areas of one’s life is known as porn addiction.

There are, however, some arguments over whether porn addiction actually exists, and if it does exist, whether there are harmful effects associated with it. One of the popular arguments against this type of addiction is that there are many people who are able to lead productive lives even after watching pornography on a regular basis. It is argued by critics that people who watch pornography on a regular basis still have normal relationships and less stimulating materials don’t desensitized them at all. Nevertheless, pornography can become a self-isolated thing for some people and they can be interfered with an otherwise usual life-routine.

Author and researcher Rory C. Reid, LCSW and other mental health professionals who specialize in pornography treatment argue that problems with affect regulation are reflected by such behavior and pornography is turned to by that individuals as a way of disassociating from their incapability to process unpleasant or uncomfortable emotions. Reid quarrels that when individuals cognitively reappraise erotic stimulus and add diverse interpretations and meanings to sex arousing contents, brain regions implicated in such arousals can be concealed.

Reid further says that it would not be physiologically possible for such patients who were legitimately addicted to pornography to be able to cognitively hold back cortical-structures activation like the nucleus accumbens in the corpus striatum.