The porn industry has long supported shills who promulgate its preferred narrative about porn use. But recently a truly twisted “Journal statement on ‘sex addiction’” was published by academic publisher Taylor & Francis.
Fortunately, a thoughtful author (on behalf of himself and a long list of colleagues) has taken the rare step of skillfully calling out the journal statement’s authors as well as the enormously profitable Taylor & Francis itself.
Taylor & Francis has been named in a RICO lawsuit because of its alleged participation in a scheme to injure those who highlight the risks of using online porn. “RICO” stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a U.S. federal law used to prosecute organized criminal activity.
Here is Dr. Caleb Jacobson, PsyD, PhD’s well reasoned rebuttal including its many endorsees. It was published in the the official, peer-reviewed publication of the International Association of Psychosexual Therapists (IAPST).:
A Response to the SRT Journal’s Statement on ‘Sex Addiction’
Abstract
Upon reading the recent “Statement on behalf of the editorial board…” by Twist et al. (2025), I briefly revisited the masthead to confirm that I was indeed engaging with a scholarly journal rather than a manifesto framed within academic typography. The concern extends beyond tone. The article adopts a posture that appears to foreclose dialogue rather than invite it, positioning addiction oriented models of sexual behavior as implicitly religiously motivated and therefore professionally suspect. It collapses diverse addiction-informed frameworks into a monolithic and implicitly religious caricature, equating them with coercive, aversive, or explicitly theological practices. In doing so, it obscures the empirical and clinical foundations of many addiction oriented approaches and replaces scholarly engagement with associative rhetoric. Such framing risks alienating colleagues who work from addiction frameworks and marginalizing both clinicians and patients whose religious backgrounds form part of their psychosocial reality. The result is a narrowing of the field’s epistemological breadth and a departure from the journal’s role as a platform for rigorous, good faith scholarly exchange.
Although the authors prudently began their statement by clarifying that it was “not a College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists (COSRT) position” and was developed independently with editorial board support, presumably to avoid the perception that the document represented COSRT’s official stance and to prevent alienation of members who practice within an addiction framework, the disclaimer does not resolve the deeper issue. As members of the editorial board of an academic journal, the authors were nonetheless advancing a position under the journal’s institutional imprimatur. This raises serious concerns regarding academic neutrality, conflicts of representational authority, and the appropriate boundaries of editorial influence within scholarly publishing. There are several concerns, not merely scholarly but ethical in scope, that warrant direct and careful response.
First, the statement functionally forecloses scholarly dialogue rather than fostering it.
An academic journal exists to cultivate rigorous debate, methodological scrutiny, and the careful testing of competing frameworks. Yet this statement moves beyond critique into prohibition. By declaring that submissions utilising the terminology or theoretical framing of ‘sex/porn addiction’ will not be considered for publication, the journal does not merely express disagreement. It preemptively excludes a line of inquiry from scholarly engagement. This positions the journal as having already adjudicated the debate in advance of ongoing scientific discourse. Rather than inviting further empirical examination, theoretical refinement, or methodological correction, the statement signals that certain conceptual frameworks fall outside the bounds of acceptable scholarship within its pages. Such a posture risks substituting editorial decree for academic deliberation. This does not expand dialogue. It narrows it. In doing so, it raises significant concerns about academic freedom, intellectual pluralism, and the appropriate role of a scholarly journal in navigating contested areas of research.
Second, the statement shifts from scholarly critique into ethical indictment without sufficient justification.
Throughout the document, addiction informed frameworks are not merely presented as theoretically or empirically contested. They are repeatedly framed as unethical, exploitative, harmful, and in breach of professional codes of conduct. By asserting that clinicians who utilise addiction oriented models are acting in violation of governing ethical standards, the statement elevates a contested theoretical debate into a matter of professional misconduct. Ethical codes are designed to protect patients from demonstrable harm, coercion, exploitation, or malpractice. They are not intended to function as instruments for resolving unresolved theoretical disagreements within a field. To equate the use of a debated conceptual framework with ethical breach risks weaponising professional standards in service of epistemological preference. Such a move places clinicians under an implied cloud of ethical suspicion without clear evidence of misconduct and blurs the distinction between evidence based critique and moral censure.
Third, the statement adopts a reductive and dismissive posture toward religious frameworks, particularly Christianity, that risks marginalising religious clinicians and patients.
Throughout the document, references to twelve step programmes, “higher power,” abstinence, and related spiritual language are presented as though they are inherently coercive, hierarchically oppressive, or uniquely Christocentric. In doing so, the statement appears to caricature Christianity as uniformly authoritarian, sexually repressive, and ethically suspect. This does not merely critique specific practices. It risks disparaging an entire religious tradition and, by extension, the clinicians and patients who identify with it. Religious belief is neither synonymous with coercion nor incompatible with evidence based care. To imply otherwise collapses theological diversity into ideological stereotypes.
I write this not as a Christian, but as an Orthodox Jew. I do not share the theological commitments being critiqued. Yet it is precisely from that position that I find the tone and framing troubling. Professional colleagues who are Christian, and patients who draw upon Christian moral frameworks in shaping their sexual ethics, deserve the same respect afforded to any other cultural or philosophical worldview. Furthermore, I hold advanced and terminal degrees in biblical studies and have spent years engaged in rigorous academic theological scholarship. From that vantage point, it is concerning to observe the authors project a singular and distinctly Western interpretation of concepts such as “higher power,” treating it as inherently hierarchical and autonomy eroding. This reading reflects one theological lens, not a universal one. In many religious traditions, including strands within Christianity itself, divine authority is understood in relational, covenantal, or communal terms rather than as coercive domination.
Moreover, in more collectivist societies, autonomy is not always the primary moral axis.
Community, interdependence, and transcendence often occupy central ethical roles. To dismiss spiritual frameworks as intrinsically oppressive reflects a culturally bounded epistemology and suggests a posture of epistemic hubris in positioning secular Western liberal individualism as inherently more enlightened.
Fourth, the statement conflates misuse of a framework with the framework itself, engaging a constructed extreme rather than its strongest formulations.
The document repeatedly catalogues instances of poor clinical practice, coercive twelve step environments, abstinence rhetoric, conversion practices, and aversive techniques. These are serious concerns and, where substantiated, warrant ethical scrutiny. However, the argument then moves from critiquing these applications to indicating the addiction model itself as inherently unethical or pseudoscientific. This represents a categorical conflation. A theoretical framework is not equivalent to every practitioner who misapplies it. By that logic, cognitive behavioral therapy would be invalidated by culturally insensitive implementations, and psychoanalysis would be disqualified by its early excesses. The appropriate academic task is to distinguish between theoretical claims, empirical evidence, and clinical misuse. Failing to do so collapses necessary distinctions and weakens the analytical rigor of the critique.
Moreover, the critique appears to engage a particular ideological iteration of addiction-informed practice while leaving largely unaddressed more secular, neurobehavioral, and empirically oriented formulations of the model. By repeatedly linking addiction frameworks to explicitly theological language, Christocentric twelve step structures, pain inducing techniques, and conversion practices, the statement constructs a composite representation that does not adequately reflect the full diversity of positions within addiction theory. To critique the most ideologically charged expressions of a framework while not engaging its strongest empirical articulations risks creating a rhetorical imbalance. Scholarly evaluation requires engagement with the most robust version of a theory, not merely its most controversial applications.
Fifth, the appeal to diagnostic authority is deployed selectively and inconsistently.
The statement relies heavily on the absence of “sex addiction” from the DSM and the classification of CSBD within the ICD 11 as evidence that addiction oriented frameworks are scientifically invalid. Yet diagnostic manuals are historically iterative, politically influenced, and shaped by ongoing scholarly negotiation. They are administrative classification systems, not final arbiters of ontological truth. To treat their present formulations as decisive closure of theoretical debate reflects an overly rigid understanding of how diagnostic knowledge evolves.
More concerning, however, is the asymmetry in how such institutional authority is invoked. In other professional contexts, the DSM has been publicly criticised by some of the same voices advancing this statement as flawed, politicised, or in need of revision. When its conclusions are contested, it is described as imperfect and historically contingent. When its omissions align with one’s present argument, it is invoked as definitive scientific validation. Such selective reliance on diagnostic authority reveals a troubling inconsistency in epistemic posture. Institutional documents cannot simultaneously be treated as provisional when inconvenient and conclusive when expedient.
The issue is not whether the DSM or ICD should inform clinical thinking. They should. The issue is whether they are being engaged with principled consistency. Scholarly integrity requires that institutional authority be applied evenly across debates, rather than strategically leveraged to foreclose theoretical disagreement.
Sixth, the statement expands beyond its stated scholarly purpose into sweeping international regulatory commentary that exceeds the scope of a theoretical clarification.
The article presents itself as a clarification of diagnostic terminology and theoretical framing within the sphere of sexual compulsivity. Yet it proceeds to devote substantial space to regulatory commentary across multiple countries, ethical codes from numerous governing bodies, and public health directives spanning several jurisdictions. While international context can be valuable, the breadth and prescriptive tone of these sections move the document beyond scholarly analysis and into normative policy advocacy.
By surveying regulatory landscapes in the United Kingdom, France, South Africa, Brazil, Australia, Canada, and the United States, and by drawing ethical conclusions about clinical conduct across these jurisdictions, the statement assumes a degree of global adjudicatory authority that warrants careful reflection. Professional regulation is culturally embedded, historically contingent, and legally distinct across regions. To extrapolate a singular normative conclusion across such varied contexts risks oversimplification. Moreover, the repeated assertion that addiction oriented frameworks are in breach of ethical codes in multiple countries extends the argument from academic disagreement into transnational professional censure.
If the intention is to frame this as an international position, that framing must also acknowledge international plurality. Conceptualisations of autonomy, morality, community, and sexual health differ across societies, particularly between individualist Western contexts and more collectivist cultures. To present a unified global prescription from within a predominantly Western academic lens risks reproducing the very epistemic centralisation the statement elsewhere critiques as “colonising.” Scholarly humility requires recognising that global scope does not automatically confer global consensus.
Seventh, the invocation of financial incentive as a delegitimising factor is applied without reciprocity, raising governance concerns.
The statement suggests that certain clinicians and certification bodies derive financial benefit from addiction oriented frameworks and implies that such financial incentives undermine the legitimacy of those approaches. Financial conflicts of interest are indeed an appropriate subject of scrutiny in academic and clinical discourse. However, if financial incentive is introduced as a criterion for evaluating conceptual legitimacy, it must be applied consistently.
Academic journals, publishers, training institutes, and professional organisations also operate within financial structures. Journals generate revenue through subscriptions, institutional licensing, publication fees, conference sponsorships, and affiliated training ecosystems. Publishers derive commercial benefit from editorial positions, thematic special issues, and ideological alignment that increases visibility and readership. If financial incentive alone casts suspicion on the intellectual integrity of a framework, then the same scrutiny must extend to all institutional actors, including journals that take formal public stances on contested theoretical matters.
This raises important governance considerations, particularly in the United Kingdom. A journal affiliated with a professional body and published through a commercial entity must be attentive to principles of fairness, transparency, and avoidance of reputational harm. Publicly declaring that specific conceptual frameworks are unethical, exploitative, or fraudulent while simultaneously excluding them from publication may have material consequences for clinicians’ professional standing. In UK legal context, particularly under principles governing defamation, professional negligence, and restraint of trade, categorical public statements about ethical breach warrant careful evidentiary grounding. The issue here is not whether journals may express editorial judgment. They may. The issue is whether financial motive is being invoked selectively and whether institutional actors are holding themselves to the same standards of conflict scrutiny they apply to others.
When financial considerations are raised asymmetrically, the argument risks appearing less as principled ethical critique and more as competitive positioning within a professional marketplace of ideas. Scholarly discourse is strengthened when standards are applied evenly, not selectively.
Conclusion
At the time of this writing, the article has received over 8,465 views. This is not an insignificant number. When an editorial statement published under the banner of a peer reviewed journal characterises a contested theoretical framework as unethical, exploitative, pseudoscientific, or professionally suspect, the reputational impact extends well beyond the pages of the journal itself. Such statements shape referral networks, influence training programs, inform regulatory interpretation, and affect how clinicians are perceived by colleagues, institutions, and patients.
The issue is therefore not one of personal disagreement or theoretical preference. It is one of professional representation and institutional responsibility. Many clinicians who utilize addiction-informed frameworks in good faith, grounded in empirical literature and secular clinical reasoning, have now been publicly portrayed as operating outside ethical standards. They have not merely been critiqued. They have been institutionally marginalised. That distinction matters.
It is important to state clearly that I do not personally practice from an addiction model. My own clinical work does not rest upon that framework. However, I respect colleagues who do, particularly those who engage it thoughtfully, empirically, and without coercion. Professional diversity is not a weakness within a field. It is a sign of intellectual vitality. Clinicians must retain the freedom to conceptualise complex human behaviour through differing, rigorously argued models, provided they do so ethically and transparently. A journal committed to scholarship must safeguard that freedom by allowing debate, discussion, and critical discourse to unfold openly rather than foreclosing it through categorical exclusion.
Given the scope of the claims made, the ethical indictments advanced, and the categorical exclusion of opposing scholarship under the imprimatur of the journal, a formal correction is warranted. At minimum, an acknowledgment of the overreach in tone and scope would be appropriate. More responsibly, the journal should consider whether retraction or substantive revision is necessary to restore confidence in its commitment to scholarly neutrality and intellectual pluralism.
Furthermore, because the statement explicitly references the College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists while purporting not to represent it, COSRT would do well to publicly clarify its distance from the document and reaffirm its commitment to professional diversity within its membership. Where governance concerns arise, transparency is not punitive. It is protective of institutional integrity.
Academic journals hold considerable power. With that power comes responsibility. Editorial platforms must not be used to foreclose debate, elevate contested positions to the status of ethical mandate, or conflate disagreement with misconduct. The future of psychosexual therapy depends not upon unanimity, but upon rigorous, pluralistic, and intellectually honest discourse.
In recent years, there has been an increasingly concerning trend within psychosexual therapy toward the marginalization—or outright silencing—of voices that challenge prevailing ideological currents. When disagreement is interpreted as disqualification, and when scholarly critique is treated as moral transgression, the field risks narrowing its intellectual horizons. Psychosexual therapy, like all scientific and clinical disciplines, advances not through unanimity but through rigorous debate, methodological scrutiny, and the disciplined exchange of competing ideas.
True academic discourse requires the courage to engage with positions we may find uncomfortable or discordant with our own theoretical commitments. It demands intellectual humility and a commitment to evidence over ideology. The health of our profession depends upon plurality—not uniformity—and upon protecting the space for respectful, evidence-based disagreement.
This moment, therefore, is not merely about correcting a specific publication. It is a call to reaffirm the foundational principles of academic freedom, open inquiry, and professional dialogue that allow our field to grow, refine itself, and serve patients with integrity.
Just as the undersigned editorial board members appended their names in collective affirmation of their position, I have likewise invited colleagues from across the field to endorse my statements. Their support reflects a shared concern that corrective clarification is necessary to repair the professional harm caused by the publication of the original statement.
Respectfully,
Dr. Caleb Jacobson, PsyD, PhD
The School of Sex Therapy
President, International Association of Psychosexual Therapists (IAPST)
Sources
Twist, M. L. C., Neves, S., Vigorito, M. A., Ansara, G., Rudolph, E., Marshall, K., … Herrero, R. (2025). Statement on behalf of the editorial board from the journal of Sexual and Relationship Therapy: International Perspectives on Theory, Research, and Practice on ‘sex addiction,’ ‘pornography addiction’, out-of-control-sexual-behaviours, and compulsive sexual behaviours. Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 40(4), 721–744. DOI:10.1080/14681994.2025.2578550
Endorsees (Listed in Alphabetical Order)
Ian Baker, BACP m(reg.), COSRT m, ATSAC m
Kostana Banjac, AccCOSRT, NCPS, ISSM.M
Jillian Bennett, Addiction & Relationship Counsellor, MBACP, RegCOSRT, ATSAC
Dr. Laurie Betito, PhD, IAPST Certified Psychosexual Therapists
Jane Buckley, COSRT reg; ATSAC; Addictions Professionals reg; Dip. psysextherapy
Dr. Shoshana Bulow, PhD, IAPST Certified Psychosexual Therapists
Claire Butt, ACC, MBACP(Accred) ATSAC
Christine Cartin, Therapist
Cecily Criminale, MS, MEd, MA, Psychotherapist & Clinical Associate, Registered Member UKCP, Accredited Member BACP, COSRT, EMDR UK, EMDR EUROPE, Qualified Member ATSAC
Dr. Richelle Dadian, PsyD, IAPST Certified Psychosexual Therapists
Dr. Michael Davey, MBBS, BA(Hons) Theology & Counselling, L5 Dip SAC
John Dix, PGDip ATSAC MBACP RegCOSRT
Dr. Simon Draycott, Chartered Counselling Psychologist
Dr. Wafaa Eltantawy, FCoSRH, IAPST Certified Psychosexual Therapists, IAPST Fellow, COSRT Accred. COSRT Registered Supervisor
Dr. Susan Frantz, EdD, IAPST Certified Psychosexual Therapists, AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, Treasurer – International Association of Psychosexual Therapists
Juliet Grayson, UKCP Reg psychosexual therapist and supervisor
Dr. Paula Hall, Sexual & Relationship Psychotherapist, UKCP Reg, BACP (Snr Accred), Acc COSRT (Snr), NCPS (Sir Acc) ATSAC
Roger Harrison, Psychotherapist & Counsellor, PGDip.
Dr. Glyn Hudson-Allez, Forensic Psychosexual Therapist, CPsychol AFBPsS, COSRT Fellow and RegCOSRT(sup)
Dr. Robert Hudson, Psychotherapist, psychosexual and relationship therapist, compulsive sexual behaviour & certified sexual addiction therapist & supervisor, researcher and lecturer.
LaTanya E. Jones, MSM, NIC, MSW, MED, LMSW, C-PST, Executive Officer of the International Association of Psychosexual Therapists (IAPST)
Judi Keshet-Orr MSc., UKCP reg. Founder & Course Director – London Diploma in Psychosexual and Relationship Therapy. IAPST Certified Psychosexual Therapists,COSRT Accred. COSRT Accredited Supervisor. FCOSRT (Fellow COSRT)
Bernd Leygraf, Consultant Psychotherapist, Fellow COSRT, Fellow NCIP, Fellow NCPS
Karen Lloyd, Psychosexual and Relationship Therapist
Tommy Underhill, BA, ASDCS, ASDI, CCTP, Managing Editor, International Journal of Psychosexual Therapy
Margaret Ramage, Fellow COSRT
Richard Simpson, UKCP reg. CoSRT accd.NCPS accd
Anastassis Spiliadis, Consultant Family & Systemic Psychotherapist
Dr. Robert Schwartz
Dr. Michael R. Sytsma, PhD, CST, C-PST, CPCS
Emma Tibbetts-Powell, Clinical Associate, Sexual Addiction & Relationship Counsellor, Psychosexual Therapist, AccCOSRT, ATSAC, FMC (WTA), RGN, RM, SCPHN-HV
Dr. Daniel N. Watter, Past President, The Society For Sex Therapy and Research
Peter Watts, MBACP Accred, MACC, ATSAC, ISAT
Jaap Westerbos, Sen Accred COSRT, Accredited NCPS, Reg BACP
Chris Wilhoite, MS, LMFT, C-PST, IAPST Certified Psychosexual Therapists, AAMFT Clinical Fellow, AAMFT Approved Supervisor, Ethics committee chair – International Association of Psychosexual Therapists
Dr. Mark A. Yarhouse, PsyD, Dr. Arthur P. Rech & Mrs. Jean May Rech Professor of Psychology, Director of Sexual & Gender Identity Institute, Wheaton College.