Nymphomania, characterized by an excessive sexual appetite, is a psychiatric disorder – there are no biological reasons to explain its origin. According to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), nymphomania is considered a compulsion, not related to the production of sex hormones. Just like compulsion for food, drink or shopping, it happens when the patient cannot control her impulse – in the case of nymphomania, for sex. However, medicine does not have numerical criteria to classify when a woman becomes a nymphomaniac. “The diagnosis is made when the patient is uncomfortable. She seeks out many sexual partners but cannot satisfy herself. In the medical literature, there are reports of patients who had up to 50 sexual relations in the same day”, says psychiatrist Fernanda Piotto Frallonardo, from Hospital Estadual Mário Covas. Generally, the woman with compulsion for sex already presents compulsive behavior since she was a child, whether for sweets or other objects. “The mechanism of compulsion is the same, only the object changes”, says Fernanda. The same compulsion also affects men, and more frequently, only it is called satyriasis.
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