The film SHAME is making quite a splash in the build up to its UK release next week. You can watch a trailer of it here on The Guardian website. Directed by Steve McQueen (winner of the Golden Camera at the Cannes Film Festival, and a Turner Prize and BAFTA), and starring Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan, it tells the story of Brandon (Fassbender), a single man who suffers from sex ‘addiction’. His ordered lifestyle is thrown into chaos with the arrival of his needy sister.

If the trailer were the only form of judging whether SHAME is going to be a useful watch for someone looking to find out something about sex, porn and/or masturbatory ‘addictions’, then certainly it gives away very few clues. But until I get to watch the film next week I’m going to have to rely on informed people like r-kern (a self-disclosing sex addict) who have already had the chance. You can read r-kern’s thoughts in a review on IMDb
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1723811/board/nest/192736054

What I am noticing is that my own book, Turned On: intimacy in a pornized society, has seen an upturn in sales since Christmas. Coincidence or connected? Who knows. I just hope that people will end up being informed by SHAME, as the film’s reach is well beyond what most books (including Turned On) can hope to achieve.

You can read an abridged chapter from Turned On: intimacy in a pornized society by clicking here. And you can buy the book from Amazon by clicking this link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Turned-Intimacy-Pornized-D-Stafford/dp/095649871X

Duncan E. Stafford
Psychotherapist, author and supervisor