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Sunday, October 29, 2006

Sexsomnia Roundup

filed under: Do It for Science by Melissa Gira | Leave a Comment

New Scientist has cracked the sleep sex story once again, reporting on the effects sexsomnia has on intimate relationships. (If you, like me, are temporarily without bugmenot, just check the Reuters story, which is pretty close.)

It’s difficult to find much publicly available on the subject, but the next time you’re in the stacks at your local research institution (or you scam a login to one of these sites), here’s some places to start:

• Sexsomnia: a new parasomnia? This is the originating paper in the field. From the abstract: “Sexsomnia has some distinct features that separate it from sleepwalking. The automatic arousal is more prominent, motor activities are relatively restricted and specific, and some form of dream mentation is often present.”
• A phenomenology of problematic sexual behavior occurring in sleep. A more recent study drawn from Internet respondents. “Results suggest that sleep sex can elicit negative emotions and cognitions that may become a source of personal and relational distress. Clinician familiarity with problematic sleep sex may foster more effective communication with individuals presenting with such complaints.”
• You can also keep an eye on “sleep sex” studies, and sign yourself up at Sleepsex.org. Stanford ran this one in 2002, and found that “…symptoms [that] included loud, disruptive moaning on one end of the scale and sexual assault on the other. Regardless of how unusual or violent the behavior, patients had no memory of the events the next morning.”

Yes, sexual assault. One trend in the sexsomnia field is use the expert testimony of researchers to intervene in charges of sexual assault made against actual or alleged sufferers for the disorder. Wikipedia currently points to three different cases of rape charges being dropped when the assailant was shown to have sexsomnia. Of the three, however, one man was found guilty on appeal, and prosecutors are seeking a similar appeal in a second case.

What with how very little research goes into things sex, and the still-significant uphill battles rape survivors face in seeking legal redress, I think it’s safe to give decent pause at how the sleep sex field is developing, as, in the words of one sexsomniac, “Is this just a stipulation or a convenience [sic] excuse with men with a sex obsession?”

comparatively sweet to-clear-the-palette photo by: Ryan Tomorrow

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