Excessive Consumption of Digital Pornography and the Mental Health of Contemporary Man: Approaches Between Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience

Abstract

The unrestricted access to online pornography, intensified by streaming culture and hyperconnectivity, has raised concerns about its impact on men’s mental, sexual, and relational health. This article aims to discuss, from a psychoanalytic and neuroscientific perspective, the effects of excessive pornography consumption on male subjectivity, focusing on compulsive patterns, psychological distress, sexual dysfunctions, and relational impairment. An integrative literature review was conducted using PubMed, SciELO, PsycINFO, PePSIC, and Google Scholar databases, including publications from 2014 to 2025 in Portuguese, English, and Spanish. The theoretical framework articulates Freud’s contributions on sexuality and drive, as well as Winnicott’s concepts of inner world and object use, with contemporary findings on Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder (CSBD) and problematic pornography use. The results indicate that repeated pornography use is associated with changes in reward circuitry, tolerance to sexual stimuli, impaired impulse control, anxiety and depressive symptoms, and sexual dysfunctions, especially in young men. Feelings of guilt, shame, and loneliness, often shaped by moral and religious beliefs, further complicate the clinical picture. It is concluded that pornography-related problems must be understood within a biopsychosocial and subjective framework, requiring dialogue between psychoanalysis, psychiatry, neuroscience, and public policies in sexual education and mental health, with interventions addressing both compulsive behavior and underlying relational and existential suffering.