Description:
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When Eliot Spitzer, the Governor of New York, was caught making a sizeable wire transfer to pay for a prostitute, his career in politics ended. But the scandal also caused considerable discussion among mental health professionals, regarding why men use prostitutes, especially when doing so exposes them to severe social risk. In this paper, Stephen Greenspan, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado, discusses three views on Spitzer's conduct: the "normal man” perspective, which sees it mainly in sexual terms ; the psychoanalytic perspective, which sees it in terms of Oedipal or other personality processes ; an integrative "foolish action” perspective, which sees it as a matter of sexual need, but also as a matter of poor judgment--resulting from the confluence of situational, cognitive, personality and affective/ state factors-- in meeting that need. |
