This is a film unlike any other. It took 17 years for the director, screenwriter and starring Keweihe to present this film to us with great courage, wisdom, and perseverance, overcoming many difficulties.
In this documentary-style film, Keviher's endless reflection and sincerity touched me deeply, and I repeatedly asked myself, are the comments I made appropriate? To what extent can it reflect Kevich's inner truth? To what extent can it reflect my inner truth? Can I really point fingers at him and analyze it savagely after just watching the movie a few times?
This contradiction makes my writing difficult. Then I realized that my sense of self-determination as a film critic was shaking—just like Keviher's self-image in the film, the transference happened.
This made me even more certain that I Am a Sex Addict is indeed a movie about narcissism.
I have received very little from the movie reviews and tidbits of this film on Baidu (limited in English, so I can't google it). Apparently, this film, which won the Gotham Award in 2005 (the most important award for non-commercial films in the United States), did not receive corresponding appreciation in the country. And the introduction of director Keweihe is even rarer.
Then I continued to Baidu "sex addiction", and the income was very limited. In the several articles I found, I only read sporadically that it is generally believed that sex addiction has existed since ancient times, but the discussions on sex addiction are all related to culture, social environment (Internet pornography), and stress relief, which are obviously not strong enough. There is only one article that mentions psychoanalysis, and it is not appropriate in my opinion: It is said that Tiger Woods' father is a sex addict. He hates his father and can't get through the period of Oedipus well, so he passed the sex addiction as an adult. Identify with the father and prove it is his son.
In psychiatry, sex addiction seems to be more associated with compulsive behavior, which is considered compulsive sex. But I think this explanation is inappropriate. Obsessive-compulsive behavior is a counteracting, confrontational, defense-related (ambivalent); sex addiction is a specific, specific craving for gratification, related to a need (deficit).
Keviher's sex addiction is an expression of a structural psychological defect. This was evident when he left Caroline and lived alone. He describes a pattern: emptiness and depression - a confrontation of urge and restraint (taking turns prevailing) - "do it one last time" - emptiness and depression... The vast majority of Keviher's inner motivation is spent in erotic urge and In the confrontation of restraint, the creativity and action that can no longer be provided to him.
—Then why is this confrontation (sex addiction) so important, taking up so much mental space and squeezing everything else out?
As we can notice from the film, this confrontation does not exist all the time. It first appeared in Keviher's heated argument with his wife, and later, when Keviher's relationship with his partner deteriorated (on the verge of loss), or when he lost his partner. Conversely, when Keviher's relationship with his partner was stable, he had far fewer sex addiction behaviors, or even "don't think about it."
From this it can be inferred that Keviher's sex addiction is a surrogate for intimacy, or an equivalent. When Keviher feels loved enough, he doesn't need prostitutes at all (even when he hasn't had sex with Caroline for 2 months); and when his relationship with his wife or girlfriend deteriorates (usually through Beginning with their rejection of his "absolute candor"), the sex addiction has risen violently and aggressively.
In this process, "absolute candor" played a very important role. Keviher's frantic quest for candor—and this film is a product of that candidness—is a show of old exaggerated expressionism. The blueprint for this show is that my mother fully mirrored, embraced and appreciated everything about Kevich (everything about sex) - look at me, I'm great!
In fact, the performances that exaggerate expressiveness are the actions of the self trying to fill the defects of inner structure.
Wife, girlfriend become a self-object at this time, helping Keweiher to deal with his unaccepted (integrated into personality) sexual desires (this sexual desire is also closely related to aggression) - these sexual desires are not accepted, are Because of the inner experience of his mother taking him and his sister to humiliate his father's lover at the age of 8 (and at a deeper level, probably because of the failure of the mother's self-object mirroring at an early age). During this experience, the mother clearly displayed aggression, rejection and contempt for the father-male sexuality. And the 8-year-old Keweihe has a male sexual part in his heart, and this part of the self is equal to the dirty and ugly (in the eyes of the mother) in this experience. Keviher's sexuality as a man has since been linked to sin (resulting in family breakdown, mother's attack) and is further excluded from the unified personality structure, becoming a fragment - one can see Keviher's youth Sexual feelings and actions are broken, and sex is sex, nothing else.
Then the father's departure further aggravates the trauma: it deprives another possible healthy direction of development—getting a mirror from the father or merging with the idealized father's image (to deal with the inner anxiety and isolation of sexuality) ).
Therefore, when Keweihe's wife and girlfriend showed acceptance of his sexuality, Keweihe felt loved and intimate as never before; and when they did not accept, Keweihe frantically sought prostitutes and oral sex to replace this Lack of love (like gluttony, substituting food for love).
Kevich's candor is a fixation (8 years old), where candor is not just candor, it is equal to the effort to be accepted, and the effort to be accepted is equal to maintaining the unity and stability of the self.
For Keviher, acceptance of sexuality was equated with acceptance of the self, and an ugly and dirty penis was equated with an ugly and dirty self. Through the behavior of the partner-mother self-object sucking the penis, the process of accepting and integrating the dirty self-image in the heart is completed at the symbolic level. "I feel like I've gotten so much love, I can't believe anyone else loves me so much that they'd be willing to suck that dick I've always thought was ugly and dirty, put it in my mouth," Keviher said. Or willing to swallow my sperm."
From a therapeutic point of view, this process needs to be repeated and maintained stably, and with just the right set of setbacks, so that Keviher can slowly take over the baton from the partner-mother's self-object and complete this sexual desire-self by himself. Accept and organize work.
From childhood desires for "soul mates", to multiple partnerships, to sex addiction recovery support groups, these fantasies and realities, for Keviher, have a self-object function (mirror, acceptance), providing him with The possibility of reintegrating sexuality into the self and the selfobject environment.
Luckily, Keviher eventually found this setting in a sex addiction recovery support group. The co-existence (alternative-self-object transfer relationship) provided by a group of people with similar experiences, the stable setting - at least once a week for more than ten years, provides a stable self-object environment for the redevelopment of the self. It is not difficult to imagine that this group must have also experienced setbacks in the past ten years. But it persisted and proved that these setbacks were not traumatic, but were just the right setbacks.
With the combined effect of a stable selfobject environment and just the right setbacks, Keviher's self has been redeveloped. He began to stay in an intimate relationship for 7 years, was able to endure quarrels without fear of being abandoned, and was widely praised for his extraordinary creativity and action to complete the film.
At the end of the film, it is another wedding of Keweihe. Simple ending, but very moving.
What is touching is not the story, but the truth deeply rooted in the heart of the story.
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