title: [Sex "addiction": compulsion and controversy].
abstract: Modern occidental society often distorts and, in some cases, ignores healthy concepts regarding sexuality. Besides, It not always considers this, to be mental health or to represent an expression of whole health. Such ambivalence towards sex and the sexual is located between the limits of the sacred and erotic, both associated to taboos and their transgression. Since the last century, the current "neosexual" revolution intents to dismantle old patterns in favor of the dissociation of human sexual sphere, the dispersion of sexual fragments towards individualism and intimate relationships diversification. Within such context, "addiction" to sex and the sexual, as a compulsive conduct, represents on one side a clinical reality each time better observed and diagnosed, where the importance of family history is recognized, as well as individual psychopathology, and marital life, in its etiology and also for its treatment and prevention. On the other hand, it has not been classified in the mental health catalogues as it is not considered, meanwhile, as the problem is been maintained, the co-morbidity and its consequences multiply, and the controversy continues.
authors.affiliation: Sección Permanente de Sexología Médica, Asociación Psiquiátrica Mexicana, A.C.
authors.forename: Mario
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Souza y  Machorro
mesh_terms: D016739:Behavior, Addictive / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D012723:Sex; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires